Mississippi lawmakers next year will have to put together two complex jigsaw puzzles when they gather under the Capitol dome for their 2025 session.
State lawmakers will be required to redraw Mississippi’s 23 Circuit Court and 20 Chancery Court districts and comply with a federal court order to redraw some of their own legislative districts, as well.
“It’s going to be very, very difficult to do this,” Senate President Pro Tempore Dean Kirby told Mississippi Today.
Kirby, a Republican from Pearl and chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, said that Senate leadership plans to comply with an order from a federal three-judge panel who ruled earlier this year the Legislature must create new state Senate and House maps with Black-majority districts and conduct special elections in 2025 under those newly created districts.
The Mississippi Conference of the NAACP and Black voters from across the state filed a federal lawsuit against the state last year arguing the legislative districts that were drawn in 2022 by the state Legislature diluted Black voting strength.
The state has a Black population of about 38%. Currently there are 42-Black majority districts in the 122-member House and 15 Black majority districts in the 52-seat Senate.
The federal panel ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and ordered the state to create a majority-Black Senate district in the DeSoto County area in north Mississippi and one in the Hattiesburg area in south Mississippi. The panel also ruled the state must create a majority-Black House district in the Chickasaw County area in northeast Mississippi.
However, the Legislature will also have to tweak many districts in the state to accommodate for the new Black-majority maps. State officials in court filings have argued that the redrawing would affect a quarter of the state’s 174 legislative districts.
“None of us are happy we’re having to do this,” Kirby said.
Legislative leaders will also have to address changing the boundaries of the state’s chancery and circuit court judicial districts.
State law mandates the Legislature must complete judicial redistricting by the fifth year after the U.S. Census is administered. The last Census was performed in 2020, meaning the Legislature’s deadline is 2025.
If the Legislature does not redraw the districts by the deadline, state law requires the chief justice of the state Supreme Court to modify the districts.
Senate Judiciary A Chairman Brice Wiggins, a Republican from Pascagoula, will be the main point-person in the Senate for judicial redistricting.
The current court districts have largely remained unchanged for 30 years. But Wiggins told reporters in November that he wants to substantially redraw the judicial districts based on population shifts and caseload data collected from the Administrative Office of the Courts, the Legislature’s watchdog and research office and other agencies.
The Jackson County lawmaker, over the objections of some Democrats, tried to push a bill through the Legislature during the 2024 session to overhaul the district boundaries, but negotiations between the House and the Senate stalled in the end.
Wiggins’ reason for trying to overhaul the district lines is that some districts around the state hear thousands more cases than others, and judges receive the same taxpayer-funded salary, regardless of the number of cases they deal with.
House Judiciary B Chairman Kevin Horan, a Republican from Grenada, is the lead House negotiator on judicial redistricting. He did not respond to a request for comment on the House’s plans for judicial redistricrting.
House Speaker Jason White, a Republican from West, said through a spokesperson that he will “continue to gather feedback from members” and plans to “come forward with a plan for judicial and legislative redistricting.”
The 2025 legislative session will begin on January 7.
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