Gov. Tate Reeves on Wednesday morning said he will cancel a special legislative session set for next week to redraw Mississippi’s state Supreme Court districts, but he indicated the state will redraw its four congressional districts at some point.
Reeves, on SuperTalk radio, indicated that it would be difficult for the state to redraw the congressional districts in time for the upcoming midterm election and that it could hurt Republicans overall in congressional races if Mississippi did so.
Still, he stressed he wants the state to redraw congressional districts in the future and said Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson’s hold on one of Mississippi’s four congressional seats will end soon.
“The tenure of Congressman Bennie Thompson reigning terror on the 2nd Congressional District is over,” Reeves said. “It’s not a question of if. It’s a question of when.”
Reeves, a Republican, said his reason for calling off next week’s special session is the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals overturning an order from U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock that found the Mississippi Supreme Court districts violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting Black voting power. Aycock had ordered the state to redraw them.
But even though the appellate court tossed out Aycock’s initial order, it doesn’t mean that the litigation ended entirely.
The plaintiffs in the case and the state, which is the defendant, filed a joint request with the 5th Circuit to overturn the lower court’s order and remand it for further legal work.
The reason the parties asked to file additional arguments with Aycock is to debate, again, whether the districts violate the Voting Rights Act, in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent landmark ruling in the Louisiana v. Callais case.
So Aycock could still rule at a later date that the districts violate federal law and again order the state to redraw them. She recently ordered the parties to file a joint status report by May 26 outlining how the case should proceed.
The parties have not filed any recent court papers, but the Mississippi chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the parties involved in the litigation, previously said in a news release that it believes even under the new Callais standards, the state Supreme Court districts are discriminatory and violate federal law.
The governor, however, said he wants the Legislature to redraw the state’s congressional and legislative districts in the future. He said he’s working closely with the Trump administration to determine when the state should move.
Even though the governor’s only agenda item for the special session was judicial redistricting, several Republican state lawmakers and President Donald Trump pressured Reeves to add congressional redistricting to the session as part of the president’s push to redraw many congressional districts into safe Republican ones.
Mississippi has already held primary elections for congressional seats, so Mississippi would have to nullify its party primaries and hold another round of elections to redistrict in time for the November midterms.
“It’s complicated,” Reeves said. “Every issue surrounding redistricting is complicated, and I think it is fair to say that we are looking at every potential option as to what they may look like, and when is the best time to look at it.”
If the state tossed out its primary elections results, Reeves said the state could set a nationwide precedent that would allow both Republican and Democratic-led states to cancel out primary elections. He said that could thwart what is expected to be a large net gain for Republican-leaning districts nationwide in the upcoming midterms.
But the governor said he expected lawmakers to redraw congressional, state legislative and state Supreme Court district lines between now and the 2027 statewide election cycle.
House Speaker Jason White last week announced that he has formed a select committee that will study redistricting over the summer and fall and make recommendations.
The governor did not call anyone by name, but he said that certain officials who are considering a statewide run in 2027 have made redrawing congressional districts a top issue on social media recently and that they don’t understand how complex the issue is. One of the most vocal proponents of redrawing the districts is state Auditor Shad White, who is a likely candidate for governor next year.
“This is going to be the silly season in Mississippi politics,” Reeves said.
