Appeals court rules for Hattiesburg ward redistricting
The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled the City of Hattiesburg's five-district ward plan does not dilute the voting power of African American residents.
According to a judgment filed Monday before Chief Judge Carl E. Stewart and circuit judges Catharina Haynes and Edith Brown Clement, the court found no error in the city's system, which under a Revised Proposed Redistricting Plan consists of three majority white wards and two majority African American wards.
"The African American population in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority of the voting age population in three (3) of the five (5) wards," the document says.
The 2013 suit marked the second time in the past eight years black Hattiesburg residents/voters sued over the drawing of the lines in the five city wards. Both times, arguments that redistricting in Hattiesburg had harmed black voters was dismissed.
"Obviously, I'm very pleased with the outcome (of the case), but I'm not surprised by the outcome," City Council President Carter Carroll said Wednesday. "We did our redistricting this time exactly like we did the time before, and it was upheld by the courts that we had done everything correctly."
A complaint was filed in February 2013 by the Rev. Kenneth Fairley, the Rev. D. Franklin Browne, Dennis D. Henderson, Carlos Wilson, Fred Burns, Charles Bartley and Clarence Magee. It says that the city's current plan "impermissibly dilutes African American voting strength and denies African American voters an equal opportunity to participate in political processes and violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the right to vote clause of the Fifteenth Amendment."
The complaint goes on to say "the white registered voters in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, vote sufficiently as a bloc to enable it to usually defeat the African American citizens' preferred city council candidates in majority white voting age population districts."
A 2010 Census of Hattiesburg showed 53.92 percent of the total population was “any part black,” and 40.48 percent of the total population was “non-Hispanic white.” The voting-age population was calculated as 48.50 percent “any part black,” and 45.98 percent “non-Hispanic white.”
Following that Census, city council members voted to adopt the Revised Redistricting Plan, which in 2012 created the three majority white wards (Wards 1, 3 and 4) and the two majority African-American wards (Wards 2 and 5).
In August 2015, U.S. District Court Judge Keith Starrett issued a memorandum opinion in the Southeastern District of Mississippi/Eastern Division saying the redistricting plan did not violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Federal judge upholds Hattiesburg ward lines
What bothers Carroll is the amount of taxpayers' money spent in the lawsuits.
"This really did a disservice to the City of Hattiesburg," said Carroll, who estimated the last go-around at about $500,000. "It was a very expensive process for the City of Hattiesburg, and we could have used that money for employee raises, we could have used it for asphalt, we could have used it for water and sewer infrastructure.
"And I think that this was almost frivolous, because we had been to court before, and they told us we did everything correctly, and when we did our redistricting this (last) time, we did it the exact same way. So (the plaintiffs) really did the citizens a disservice."