in Mississippi

Appeal
The same rules apply to annexation appeals as to appeals in incorporation cases. 54
Post Annexation
If the annexation is successful, a certified copy of the decree must be sent to the secretary of
state. 55 A map or plat of the approved boundaries is to be submitted to the chancery clerk for
recordation in the official plat book. 56
Citizen Initiated Annexation
Citizens in unincorporated areas 57 may initiate an annexation under the provisions of Code, § 21-
1-47. The following requirements must be met:
(a) the territory sought to be included must be contiguous to the municipality and (b) a petition
must be filed and signed by two thirds (⅔) of the qualified electors of the area sought to be
included. 58 A petition cannot be filed within two (2) years of the date of an adverse
determination of any proceedings for the inclusion of the same territory. 59
DEANNEXATION
Contraction of a municipality’s boundaries, or “deannexation,” can happen in two ways: 1) the
governing authorities of a municipality can initiate a proceeding for the contraction of its borders
by passage of an ordinance, just as in annexations 60 , or 2) citizens in an existing municipality
may petition a court to be excluded from the municipality. 61 The Mississippi Supreme Court has
in the last twenty years rendered only two decisions among the already few deannexation cases
to arise since the adoption of the 1950 statutes; both cases provide that the same standard for
annexations is to be utilized for deannexations – reasonableness. 62
Municipality-Initiated Deannexation
In one case, the City of Grenada attempted to contract its boundaries to deannex certain territory
from its municipal limits, purportedly to remedy federal preclearance issues which arose from its
most recent annexation in 1993, eleven years before the Supreme Court decided the
deannexation case. 63 The U.S. Attorney General had objected to federal preclearance of
Grenada’s prior annexation, finding that the 1993 annexation had both a discriminatory purpose
and effect; Grenada made a second effort for preclearance, but the U.S. Attorney General
declined to withdraw its objection. 64 In response, Grenada then adopted an ordinance for
deannexation in an effort to satisfy voting rights concerns; the objectors alleged Grenada’s effort
was unsupported by sufficient evidence and constituted a “patent racial gerrymander.” 65 The
Court held the same twelve reasonableness indicators used in annexation cases applies in
deannexation efforts and found that the objectors presented evidence on all twelve indicators,
and Grenada did not oppose any evidence presented as to eleven of those indicators; Grenada
presented evidence on only the final indicatory, and presented only a single issue, the City’s
inability to obtain preclearance. 66 After briefly reviewing the first eleven indicators, the Court
found the indicators disfavored deannexation. 67 The City attempted to argue that its twelfth
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