Jackson Free Press

The courts likely will decide Mississippi's redistricting maps after the state Senate voted to end the session last week without adopting a new redistricting map.

After passing a flurry of appropriations bills ahead of the deadline, legislators remained in session last week primarily to decide on new redistricting maps. When senators voted to close the session last Thursday, April 7, however, they essentially left the redistricting matter to the courts. That is, unless Gov. Haley Barbour calls for a special session to specifically take up the House and Senate maps.

House Speaker Billy McCoy, D-Rienzi, said Senate leaders refused to let the full Senate consider a proposal that would have redrawn House and Senate districts and ended a federal lawsuit the NAACP filed in March.

"By refusing to consider the joint resolution approved by the House, the Senate is knowingly forcing the taxpayers of this state to pay for two legislative elections and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal expenses, all in the name of hoping to achieve a partisan advantage in the upcoming campaigns," McCoy said.

The NAACP filed its lawsuit last month in federal court, asking a judge to impose new redistricting maps upon the state. President Derrick Johnson said the current districts are no longer constitutional because of population shifts the 2010 Census uncovered. Senate and House districts must contain an evenly distributed population between themselves.

The House and Senate must each approve the map from the opposite chamber, but the Senate refused to pass the House plan three times. Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant, a Republican running for governor, says the House plan does not create enough GOP districts to reflect growth in the state's conservative areas. The NAACP, meanwhile, complains that a House and Senate substitute plan submitted by Republicans does not contain enough black-majority districts to reflect the state's significant black population. Blacks, however, tend to vote Democratic.

Last week marked the Senate's third refusal to approve the House plan. Senate Rules Committee Chairman Billy Hewes, R-Gulfport, told reporters that the House did not submit the maps correctly when it submitted them as a joint resolution—a stance also adopted by House Republicans such as Rep. Greg Snowden of Meridian.

Rep. Bobby Moak, D-Bogue Chitto, said there was nothing improper about the resolution the House sent to the Senate. "If both chambers agree to vote on that resolution, then it is jointly agreed to by both parties. Hewes is looking for a reason not to allow the senators to get an up or down vote on the issue," he said.

The court is having a hard time holding the redistricting hot potato. U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves, a NAACP member, recused himself from presiding over the case Monday. He also resigned from the NAACP at the same time. This happened mere weeks after U.S. District Court Judge Dan Jordan recused himself from the case because of a relative running in a legislative race this year. Judge Tom Lee is now presiding over NAACP v. Haley Barbour, et al.