Foster v. MS

The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Mississippi, Legal Defense Fund (LDF), and NAACP moved to intervene on behalf of the DeSoto County NAACP and the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. in Foster v. Mississippi, a lawsuit seeking to eliminate the only majority-Black judicial district in DeSoto County, Mississippi. Black people make up about 36% of the county’s population, and that percentage has grown significantly in recent decades.

The above civil rights groups are seeking to intervene in the case to defend the lone, Black-majority judicial subdistrict. The district provides the only meaningful opportunity for Black voters to elect candidates of their choice in Desoto County, which has a longstanding pattern of racially polarized voting. On July 2, white voters in the county filed this lawsuit and asked the court to strike down the majority-Black judicial subdistrict, mere weeks before mail-in voting begins. The plaintiffs claim that the electoral scheme is unconstitutional, but the intervening civil rights groups maintain that the plaintiffs are distorting the scope of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais. In Callais, the Supreme Court confirmed that the use of race to draw Black-majority districts remains constitutional when required by Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.