suit over elections won’t proceed, attorney says

[07/12/01] His lawsuit against Vicksburg and 97 other Mississippi cities has been dismissed, and Delta attorney Ellis Turnage said he has no plans for further legal action against municipalities that held elections last month before redrawing ward lines.

“It ain’t for me to decide,” said Turnage, of Cleveland, who filed suit against the cities in April on behalf of the NAACP in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi. “I can’t do anything else.”

Turnage’s case would have forced Vicksburg to hold new elections in December after reapportioning its two wards based on 2000 Census data. The new population figures were unavailable before the qualifying deadline for city candidates in March.

In a two-page order issued June 4, the day before municipal elections, U.S. District Judge Allen Pepper said Turnage could not sue all 98 cities in the same court, noting that some of the municipalities are not even in the Northern District.

“If the plaintiff desires to pursue the contemplated litigation … against municipalities in the State of Mississippi, a separate complaint against each municipality must be filed in the district court where venue is appropriate,” Pepper wrote.

Asked why he did not plan to pursue 98 separate lawsuits, Turnage said, “I could do a lot of things, like hang up the phone right now.”

The suit included claims against cities not even having elections and, among other things, wanted mayoral elections invalidated in advance even though mayoral elections are conducted based on municipal boundaries rather than census information.

City attorney Nancy Thomas said her office never received notice of Turnage’s suit. She said she did not know that it had been thrown out.

“I’m certainly glad to hear that it was dismissed,” Thomas said. “I didn’t see how it applied to Vicksburg.”

Many Mississippi cities were in a quandary in choosing officials this year because of a coincidence in timing between the municipal elections and the release of Census figures. Cities must use the data to redraw wards every 10 years, but they didn’t get the new numbers in time to redraw for this year and to get federal approval as required under the Voting Rights Act.

The Legislature passed a law in January that allowed nine cities to hold elections this year based on old lines, but Vicksburg was not included. City officials said Vicksburg, because of its special charter form of government, was not required by law to redraw lines before the election.

Turnage’s lawsuit named all of the cities covered by the Legislature, as well as municipalities like Port Gibson that did not hold elections this year. The lawsuit also repeatedly referred to May 1 as election day instead of June 5.

Turnage also asked for an order declaring that existing redistricting plans in all the cities violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by “dilut(ing), minimiz(ing) and cancel(ing) out black voting.” In his order, Pepper dismissed that claim as “premature, as the complaint does not indicate to what extent, if any, requests have been directed to any (city) to redistrict itself as a result of the 2000 census, and/or whether any (city) has begun redistricting efforts.”

The Voting Rights Act says that districts cannot be drawn to discriminate against minorities. It also requires Mississippi and 15 other Southern states to get Justice Department approval before any voting-related changes.