[1] On January 30, 1937, Mize was nominated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to a seat on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi vacated by Judge Edwin R. Holmes.
He served as Chief Judge from 1961 to 1962, and remained on the court until his death on April 26, 1965.
[1] In 1962, Mize ruled that there was no evidence that the University of Mississippi's admissions policy was based on the segregation of races, and therefore was legally correct in denying admittance to James Meredith, a Black applicant.
The ruling was later overturned by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals,[2] which remanded the case to Mize and instructed him to order Meredith's admission to the University.
[3] In his majority opinion, Judge John Minor Wisdom called the handling of the case "a carefully calculated campaign of delay, harassment and masterly inactivity.