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.

We filed a lawsuit on behalf of Javarius Russell, an officer for the Jackson Public School District who says his constitutional rights were violated by the Lexington Police Department. Russell is just one victim of the department's racially-motivated and discriminatory policing practices.

Civil rights advocates challenged Mississippi’s 2022 state legislative district maps for unlawfully diluting the voting strength of Black Mississippians.

The suit, filed in the Chancery Court of Hinds County, Mississippi, argues that the Mississippi Legislature violated Section 208 of the State Constitution by appropriating $10 million to private schools. The State Constitution requires that taxpayer money must be spent only on public “free schools.”