Some Mississippi legislative districts dilute Black voting power and must be redrawn, judges say

Three federal judges are telling Mississippi to redraw some of its legislative districts because the current ones dilute Black voters' power. The judges issued their order Tuesday in a lawsuit filed by the Mississippi NAACP. Lawmakers redrew state House districts and Senate districts in 2022. The judges ordered them to draw one majority-Black Senate district in the DeSoto County area in northwest Mississippi and one in the Hattiesburg area in the south, and one majority-Black House district in Chickasaw and Monroe counties in the northeast. The order does not create additional districts. It requires legislators to adjust existing ones.