Court Cases

Desoto County, Miss - Today, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi (ACLU-MS) and Harvard Election Law Clinic filed a lawsuit on behalf of two individual voters as well as the DeSoto County NAACP and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. challenging a racially discriminatory electoral map in DeSoto County, Mississippi. The lawsuit, filed against DeSoto County, DeSoto County Election Commission and County Clerk Dale Thompson, asserts the electoral map created during the 2022 redistricting process is racially discriminatory in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, severely diluting the voting power of Black DeSoto County Mississippians and denying them a fair chance to elect representatives of their choice. Black residents comprise more than 30% of the DeSoto County population yet have zero representation in the five governmental bodies that manage the services that impact the day to day lives of the county’s 191,000 residents. Since the plan’s adoption, none of the 25 county holders is Black, nor were any Black-preferred candidates elected. The dilution of Black voting power in DeSoto County, Mississippi caused by the racially discriminatory map has created a large gap between the population and the distribution of necessary resources and services. Pervasive racial inequality in DeSoto County is reflected in disparities between Black and white community members in income and wealth, housing, education, and criminal justice, among other areas. In one example, although white students comprise less than 45% of the County’s student population, all school board officials are white.

The ACLU of Mississippi and the Center for Constitutional Rights, with support from the American Civil Liberties Union’s State Supreme Court Initiative, today filed a public records lawsuit seeking information about the Rankin County District Attorney’s Office’s handling of criminal legal cases in which sheriff deputies had engaged in a pattern of misconduct and abuse for nearly two decades. In 2023, news reports exposed a years-long pattern of torture, extreme violence, and other abusive practices by deputies in the Sheriff’s Office to coerce confessions and manufacture evidence for criminal prosecutions. These deputies, who called themselves the “Goon Squad,” were responsible for profound suffering by the local community, including numerous wrongful convictions. Following the revelations, the civil rights organizations filed a request under the Mississippi Public Records Act (“MPRA”) to the Rankin County District Attorney’s Office, which was responsible for criminally prosecuting many of the cases tainted by the Goon Squad. The request sought records relating to any actions the office took in response to the exposed police misconduct. But the District Attorney’s office initially refused to disclose any documents related to its response to the misconduct revelations and later disclosed only one email to a journalist. This is a direct violation of the MPRA. The lawsuit alleges that the Rankin County District Attorney’s Office is withholding public records that the state public records law requires it to disclose. It also highlights that the District Attorney’s claim, that there are no records responsive to several of the specific requests, contradicted by the office’s public statements that it conducted an “extensive review” of cases potentially tainted by the Goon Squad. The public records lawsuit asks the court to compel the release of several categories of records, including a list of cases with Goon Squad involvement, policies related to disclosing exculpatory evidence, any documented actions taken in response to the revelations, and communications between the District Attorney’s Office and members of the Goon Squad, among others.

The League of Women Voters, the Rural Coalition/Coalición Rural, the Center for Rural Strategies, the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), and Disability Rights Mississippi (DRMS) filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case Watson v. Republican National Committee, urging the Court to protect states’ long-standing authority to determine how timely mailed absentee ballots are received and counted. The amici are represented by the ACLU and the ACLU of Mississippi. The case centers on Mississippi’s law allowing absentee ballots that are postmarked by Election Day to be counted if they are received within a short window afterward. A ruling by the Fifth Circuit adopted a novel interpretation of federal Election Day statutes that would prohibit states from counting these ballots, even when voters followed all the rules. In their brief, amici argue that federal law does not require ballots to be received on Election Day and has never been interpreted that way in over a century of election administration. Congress has repeatedly recognized states’ flexibility to manage elections, including setting reasonable ballot receipt deadlines—especially to accommodate voters who rely on mail service, such as older voters, voters with disabilities, rural voters, and working families. The brief explains that enforcing a rigid Election Day receipt rule would lead to widespread disenfranchisement and undermine states’ ability to run elections that reflect local realities, including unreliable mail service in rural areas. Amici emphasize that this case is not about changing Election Day, but about whether federal statutes were intended to override state rules governing the counting of ballots that were lawfully cast on time. Amici urge the Supreme Court to reject the Republican National Committee’s attempt to rewrite federal election law and to affirm that states may continue counting timely cast absentee ballots. Doing so would protect voters who followed the rules and ensure that every eligible vote is counted.

The ACLU of MS and partners filed a lawsuit challenging the state's anti-DEI law, HB 1193. Complaint alleges it violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.

The ACLU of Mississippi filed a complaint, seeking damages for the false arrest, illegal search, malicious prosecution, retaliation, and excessive use of force against our client, Attorney Jill Collen Jefferson.