Foster v. State of Mississippi

DeSoto County, Mississippi has seen rapid growth in recent decades, particularly among its Black population. Despite making up about a third of the county, Black voters have not had a meaningful opportunity to elect their preferred candidate to state court.

The majority of the judges for circuit and chancery court in DeSoto County are elected on a countywide basis. The lone exception is single district within DeSoto County (also referred to as a subdistrict), based in the Horn Lake and Southaven area. That district, which is majority-Black, is being used to hold elections for the first time in 2026, to elect one circuit judge and one chancery court judge.

Voters outside of the majority-Black district are suing the State of Mississippi, in an effort to block the use of that district. Those plaintiffs claim that they are being unlawfully forbidden from participating in the judicial elections being held within the majority-Black district, while the residents of the majority-Black district continue to be able to participate in the countywide judicial elections.

However, because DeSoto County is a majority-White county with extremely high levels of racially polarized voting, Black voters are unable to elect their preferred candidates to state court in countywide elections. Thus, the majority-Black district constitutes the only meaningful opportunity that Black voters in DeSoto County may have to ensure they are represented on the bench.

On July 16, 2026, the ACLU, the ACLU of Mississippi, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund moved to intervene in the lawsuit, Foster v. Mississippi, on behalf of the DeSoto County NAACP and the Delta Theta Sigma Sorority. Both the NAACP and Delta Theta Sigma have members who reside in the Black-majority district whose voting strength would be diluted if the district were to be eliminated.

The case is in the Northern District of Mississippi, with a preliminary injunction hearing scheduled for July 31. The intervenors are asking that the plaintiffs’ motion to enjoin the use of the Black-majority district be denied.