In November 2025, Johnny DuPree won a seat in the Mississippi Senate representing Hattiesburg. It was the first time in the city's history that its residents had a Black senator, even though 51% of the city's population is Black. For decades, Hattiesburg had been carved into majority-white districts that systematically ensured white Republicans held the seat. DuPree's election only became possible after a federal court ordered Mississippi to redraw its legislative districts to give Black voters a fair chance to elect representatives of their choice.

That court order, and the elections that followed, are now in jeopardy.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the lower court's redistricting ruling in a brief, unexplained order. No legal reasoning was provided. No concurring justice offered commentary. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole dissenter. She pointed out that the Court went far beyond what Mississippi even asked for. The state's attorney general had only requested a ruling on whether private citizens could sue under the Voting Rights Act. The Court vacated the entire redistricting order.

The ruling follows the Court's recent Callais decision, which rolled back Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the provision that has for decades prevented southern states from drawing districts that lock Black voters out of representation. Gov. Tate Reeves celebrated the ruling on social media, calling it "another good day for Mississippi and America" and expressing his belief that the 2022 maps, the ones a federal court had already found unlawfully diluted Black voting strength, would now be reinstated. He also referred to Rep. Bennie Thompson, Mississippi's only Black member of Congress, as having run a "reign of terror."

Black Mississippians make up 38% of the state's population. Under the court-ordered maps, they held 29% of Senate seats and 34% of House seats, still not proportional, but meaningfully closer than before. The 2022 maps the governor wants reinstated produced less representation still.

The special elections happened. Voters cast ballots. Results were certified. Democrats flipped one House seat and two Senate seats. The historic representation those elections produced should not be erased by a Supreme Court order that provides no explanation for why it was issued.

We are calling on Congress to pass legislation restoring and codifying the full protections of the Voting Rights Act, including the private right of action that allows citizens to enforce it in court, on the Supreme Court to end the practice of issuing major orders affecting voting rights without written legal justification, and on Mississippi officials to honor the results of the 2025 special elections and refuse to reinstate maps a federal court already found to be unlawful.

Johnny DuPree's election was not just a Democratic victory. It was a democratic one. Sign this petition to demand that it stand.