The Supreme Court’s decision Wednesday to throw out Louisiana’s two racially drawn congressional districts may mean Mississippi’s legislative maps are about to change, too.
The result could be a return to a super Republican majority in the state legislature and an additional U.S. House seat for the GOP.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 did not require Louisiana to create a majority-black district, as a lower court had held in a 2022 decision.
“Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 52 U. S. C. §10301 et seq., was designed to enforce the Constitution — not collide with it. Unfortunately, lower courts have sometimes applied this Court’s §2 precedents in a way that forces States to engage in the very race-based discrimination that the Constitution forbids,” the Court said.
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Last week, before the Supreme Court’s ruling, but in the aftermath of Virginia’s referendum vote to redistrict to pick up to four new Democratic U.S. House seats, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves called for a special session of his state legislature.
“It is my sincere hope that, in deciding Callais, the U.S. Supreme Court will reaffirm the animating principle that all Americans are created equal and that when the government classifies its citizens on the basis of race, even as a perceived remedy to right a wrong, it engages in the offensive and demeaning assumption that Americans of a particular race, because of their race, think alike and share the same interests and preferences – a concept that is odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality,” Reeves wrote.
The Mississippi Clarion Ledger reported Wednesday that, in light of the Supreme Court’s decision, the state legislature, when it convenes on May 20, could vote to adopt the state map it previously approved in 2022, which reapportioned the state House and Senate districts, as well as the four U.S. House districts.
As was the case with Louisiana, a federal court judge had decided the maps violated the Voting Rights Act.
“The judge ruled that the maps unlawfully diluted black voting power and forced the state to add two majority-Black state Senate districts and one in the House. The new Senate districts, one in DeSoto County and one in the Hattiesburg area, helped Democrats break the Republican supermajority in the chamber during last year’s special elections,” the Clarion Ledger said.
Further, the outlet noted the Mississippi legislature could take aim at the state’s second congressional district, currently held by Democrat Rep. Bennie Thompson, the chair of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s partisan Jan. 6 committee, which targeted President Donald Trump and his supporters.
Thompson is the only Democrat from Mississippi’s four-member U.S. House delegation.
His district runs nearly the length of the entire western side of Mississippi and could now be divided up to create more compact ones.
Trump posted on Truth Social Thursday that he had spoken with Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, who he said promised to support efforts to redraw his state’s congressional map to net the GOP one more seat.
Further, the Florida state legislature passed a redistricting map this week backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis that could net the GOP up to four congressional seats.
The Democrats have been aggressively gerrymandering congressional maps for years, shutting Republicans out of New England, almost all of Illinois, and large swaths of California.
The results were despite both the 2022 midterms and the 2024 general elections being Republican years, the GOP ended up with anemic single-digit majorities in the House of Representatives both times. The GOP actually lost two net seats in the House in 2024, though Trump won the national popular vote with a seven swing-state sweep.
Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling allows Republican-controlled legislatures an opportunity to draw reasonable, competitive districts, so GOP voters can be more fairly represented in Congress.
This article originally appeared on The Western Journal and is reposted with permission.
