Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves is opening the door to redrawing several of his state’s electoral maps after the Supreme Court handed Republicans a major win against race-based redistricting.
Reeves told the Daily Caller in an exclusive interview Wednesday that Mississippi lawmakers are already preparing for a special session focused on the state’s Supreme Court districts, but said he has the authority to expand that call to include other redistricting matters — potentially including its congressional and state legislative maps.
“In Mississippi, it’s a little bit more complicated of an answer,” Reeves said when asked about the fallout from the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais. “We are in the middle of a Section 2 Voting Rights Act case in the federal courts as we speak.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling in Callais found that Louisiana’s congressional map amounted to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, sending shockwaves through Southern states where black-majority Democratic districts have often been defended under the VRA.
Mississippi, Reeves said, now has three separate redistricting fights in play.
“We have Supreme Court districts, we have congressional districts – which is what everybody in Washington, D.C., cares about — and then we have legislative districts,” Reeves said.
The most immediate issue is Mississippi’s state Supreme Court map. A federal judge ruled last year that Mississippi’s three Supreme Court districts violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, triggering a remedial phase that could force lawmakers to redraw the districts.
“My initial call for a special session … was specifically for Supreme Court redistricting in the event that the federal judge forced our legislature to redraw those districts,” Reeves said.
But the governor made clear that the special session may not stop there.
“I have the ability as governor, constitutionally, to either remove that call of the special session or to add to it for the purposes of any other topic, which could include other redistricting matters,” Reeves explained.
That means Mississippi could join other Republican-led states reassessing their maps after Callais. Reeves specifically pointed to Mississippi’s congressional map, which includes one majority-minority district currently represented by Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson. (RELATED: Alabama Will Redraw Congressional Map Despite Court Order)
“We know that Mississippi’s majority-minority district was drawn race consciously,” Reeves said.
“I anticipate that the Mississippi Legislature certainly will reevaluate our state’s congressional map at the earliest opportunity that they have,” he added.
Reeves stressed, however, that no final decision has been made on congressional redistricting. Mississippi’s timing is complicated because the state has already held its party primaries for the 2026 elections, unlike several other Southern states that may still have more flexibility before voters cast ballots.
“No final decisions have been made on congressional redistricting,” Reeves said, adding, “We’re also looking at whether any new maps may or may not apply in 2026 or 2028.”
Reeves framed the Supreme Court’s decision as a long-overdue correction to decades of race-based litigation under the Voting Rights Act, arguing that left-wing groups have used it to help Democrats gain power in the South. (RELATED: Florida Rolls Out Congressional Map That Could Erase Virginia Dems’ Gerrymander Advantage)
“When the Voting Rights Act was passed in Congress in 1965, a higher percentage of Republicans voted for it than did Democrats, and we were in a very different time in our country in 1965 compared to where we are in 2026,” Reeves said.
“The unintended consequences of what has transpired is literally 60 years of litigation from professional plaintiffs, the ACLU, the NAACP, most recently, the Southern Poverty Law Center,” Reeves said.
Asked whether he believed claims of empowering black voting blocs were being used as a pretext to create more Democratic districts, Reeves answered bluntly.
“100%,” he said.
“I absolutely believe that that has been their goal: to grow the power of the Democrat Party,” Reeves asserted.
Reeves also pushed back on claims that Mississippi’s Supreme Court districts prevent black-preferred candidates from winning. He noted that the state’s Supreme Court districts were drawn in 1987 and pre-cleared by the Department of Justice.
He argued that the central district at issue has produced diverse winners across several offices.
“Right now, as we sit today… we have a white male, a white female and three black males,” Reeves said of the five officials elected from the district.
Still, Reeves said a federal judge determined under the pre-Callais interpretation of the Voting Rights Act that black voters did not have a fair chance to elect their preferred candidates.
“Some of the interpretations were, in my mind, very troubling and problematic,” Reeves said.
Mississippi’s legislative maps could also come under review. A separate Voting Rights Act case resulted in two state Senate districts and one state House district being rejected under the old legal framework, forcing special elections in 2025. He argued that the Supreme Court’s new ruling could change how those maps are judged going forward. (RELATED: ‘Trivial, Baseless, And Insulting’: Justice Alito Tears Into Ketanji Brown Jackson)
“There needs to be a conversation in Mississippi about redrawing our legislative maps as well,” Reeves said.
The timing for that fight is different, he noted, because Mississippi’s next state legislative elections are in 2027, with qualifying beginning Jan. 1 of that year.
The result is that Mississippi may soon be dealing with Supreme Court, congressional and legislative redistricting all at once.
“Whereas there are a lot of states that are looking at and having conversations around, ‘Hey, what would this district or this district look like in congressional races,’” Reeves said, “in our state, it’s a little more complicated, because we’re dealing with Supreme Court redistricting, legislative redistricting and congressional all at the same time, all with different time frames.”
For Reeves, the Supreme Court’s decision marked a victory for equal treatment under the law.
“That is why Callais was so important and why it was the right decision,” Reeves said, “because it reaffirms what we’ve known all along, which is that all Americans, regardless of race, are equal.”
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