Court Cases

A unanimous three-judge panel concluded that Mississippi’s 2022 state legislative districting plan violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (“VRA”) by cracking and diluting Black voting strength in three areas of the State. The state appealed to the Supreme Court, claiming that the injured voters here—and every Section 2 voter-plaintiff for the past sixty years—had no right to sue in the first place. The ACLU-DC joined the case at the Supreme Court stage to help argue, together with the National ACLU, the ACLU of Mississippi, and other partners, that Section 2 of the VRA is enforceable by voters and not just (as the state claims) by the U.S. Attorney General. In the last four decades, private litigants, not the Attorney General, have brought the overwhelming majority of VRA Sec. 2 cases. Mississippi's radical argument would transform voting rights law and reduce VRA enforcement to whatever suits the Justice Department had time — or was politically motivated to — to file. In October 2025, we filed a motion to summarily affirm the decision of the district court and confirm voters' ability to enforce Section 2 of the VRA. In May 2026, the Supreme Court summarily reversed and remanded for reconsideration in light of Louisiana v. Callais, 146 S. Ct. 1131 (2026), which did not address enforceability but overhauled the substantive requirements for a successful Section 2 claim, making such claims much more difficult to win on the merits. Justice Jackson dissented from the remand order, pointing out that Callais was irrelevant to the question of enforceability. The case now heads back to the federal district court in Mississippi.