Federal judge blocks GOP effort to get rid of Black judicial seat in Mississippi

A federal judge rejected a Republican attempt to eliminate a Black-majority local judicial district in Mississippi, ruling that it was too close to the November election to make the change.

A group of white voters filed a lawsuit in early July targeting the only majority-Black judicial subdistrict in DeSoto County, where Black residents make up over one-third of the population. 

The white voters argued that the state, in creating the majority-Black subdistrict, discriminated against them and “unlawfully diluted the voting power of white voters…for no reason other than race.”

They asked the court to strike down the subdistrict, then either allow all voters in the district to vote in the race or hold a special election at a later date.

“In short, the Plaintiffs have wholly failed to carry their burden. They cannot overcome Purcell and are entitled to no relief at this stage,” U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, wrote.

The Supreme Court’s Purcell principle holds that courts should not change election rules too close to an election, although the court has been inconsistent with its own application.

“The Court was not presented evidence to justify the requested relief,” Aycock wrote.

A group of pro-voter organizations represented the DeSoto County NAACP and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority as intervenors in the case defending the district.

“The court’s decision protects DeSoto County voters from this unfounded, last-minute attempt to take away their only meaningful opportunity to participate in judicial elections,” Ming Cheung, an attorney with the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said in a statement.