By
TAYLOR VANCE/Mississippi Today
Several DeSoto County residents, including former Republican gubernatorial candidate and current county Supervisor Robert Foster, have filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the Legislature’s creation of majority-Black subdistricts for the state judiciary violates the Voting Rights Act. The lawsuit argues that when the Legislature redrew the state’s court districts, it gave DeSoto County an additional judge for Circuit Court and for Chancery Court. But those judges had to be elected from a majority-Black subdistrict. “Racially motivated and mathematically problematic, H.B. 1544 and S.B. 2768 are doubly unconstitutional and violate federal law as they treat similarly situated citizens unequally and deny 3 out of 4 DeSoto Countians the right to vote based on race,” the lawsuit reads. The lawsuit was filed against the three-member State Board of Election Commissioners, which is comprised of Gov. Tate Reeves, Secretary of State Michael Watson and Attorney General Lynn Fitch. Fitch’s office will likely defend the state in the litigation, and her office did not respond to a request for comment. State Sen. Mike McLendon, a Republican from Hernando, is not a party to the litigation, but he told Mississippi Today in a statement that he supports the lawsuit.
