Republicans hold 4-to-1 majority on redistricting committee now holding statewide hearings

The legislative committee charged with redrawing Mississippi’s voting districts met for the first time Monday and approved a schedule of eight public hearings across the state, the first concrete step in a process that has stalled since spring. The hearings run from Aug. 18 through late September, and lawmakers say they will begin drawing maps after hearing from voters.

The 20-member Joint Reapportionment and Redistricting Committee—16 Republicans and four Democrats—convened at the Capitol and elected Sen. Dean Kirby, R-Pearl, as chairman, Rep. Noah Sanford, R-Collins, as vice chairman, and Rep. Rodney Hall as secretary. The committee voted to hire the law firm Butler Snow as its general counsel and retained staff from the Legislature’s watchdog arm, the PEER Committee, to advise it. The first two hearings are set for Aug. 18 at Itawamba Community College in Tupelo and Aug. 27 at Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia. Each begins at 6 p.m., and the Legislature will broadcast all eight on its YouTube channel.

The committee’s priorities are the state legislative and Supreme Court district maps, Sen. Jeremy England, R-Vancleave, said after the meeting. The three Supreme Court districts also determine the boundaries for the state’s public service and transportation commission districts. England said the committee may take up the congressional map as well but is in less of a hurry there, because candidates who win the coming midterm elections will hold their seats for two more years regardless.

The process follows the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision this spring in Louisiana v. Callais, which raised the bar for proving that a voting map discriminates and prompted Mississippi Republicans to seek new lines. It also follows a federal court ruling that the state’s Supreme Court districts, unchanged since 1987, dilute Black voting strength, a case that remains unresolved and has frozen elections for those seats. Gov. Tate Reeves has signaled that a special session to adopt new maps is likely before the end of the year.

Lawmakers will treat the three majority-Black legislative districts added under a 2025 court order as a starting point, England said, though he said the committee is looking statewide. “We’re really hitting all the corners of the state to try to find out” what communities consider their shared interests, he said.

Not everyone accepts that the hearings will shape the outcome. U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, whose 2nd District covers much of the city of Jackson and the majority-Black Delta and is the seat Republicans have most openly discussed eliminating, has said he wants the work done in the open. Voting-rights advocates have gone further, calling the hearings a formality and arguing that lawmakers intend to reduce Black political power whatever the public says. That suspicion frames how the coming meetings will be watched.

The committee will hold its hearings over the next two months, then begin drawing maps for the Legislature to consider. Whatever it produces will face the same court that has already found the current Supreme Court lines unlawful, and the same federal standard that the Callais decision reshaped. The hearings are where Mississippians can give input before the lines are drawn. What weight their words carry is the question the next two months will answer.

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Image: Mississippi Capitol (Credit: R.L. Nave)