NAACP Tennessee files lawsuit challenging redrawn US House district map

The NAACP’s Tennessee chapter filed a lawsuit Thursday afternoon challenging the legality of the state’s brand new congressional map, redrawn to eliminate a majority-Black voting district.

NAACP Tennessee President Gloria Sweet-Love filed an emergency petition to stop the map from going into effect in Davidson County Chancery Court. The lawsuit was filed less than three hours after Gov. Bill Lee signed the new map into law.

The Tennessee Legislature’s Republican supermajority passed the map — carving up a historic Democratic-held district in Shelby County — during a whirlwind special session called at President Donald Trump’s behest days after the U.S. Supreme Court weakened a key section of the Voting Rights Act. Protesters opposing the redistricting flooded the Capitol for the three-day session’s entirety.

When Lee called the special session, the lawsuit argues, he did not specifically state that its purpose included repealing or suspending a Tennessee law prohibiting mid-decade redistricting. The General Assembly passed a bill nullifying that law during the session, and Lee signed it into law shortly before the final vote on the new map. 

The Tennessee Constitution stipulates that the General Assembly “shall enter no legislative business except that for which they were specifically called together,” and the map therefore violates “clear and unambiguous Tennessee statutory law and the mandates of the Tennessee Constitution,” the lawsuit states. 

The suit also challenges a provision that suspends residency requirements for candidates in the newly drawn districts. 

The General Assembly and Lee are named as defendants.

Lee’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Other lawsuits may follow

Talk of impending lawsuits challenging the legitimacy of Tennessee’s newly passed U.S. House district map started days ago. U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen — a Democrat representing the 9th District, which before Thursday contained all of Memphis — indicated that he plans to sue over the changes. 

Comments from organizers and lawmakers who opposed the new map hinted at several avenues for lawsuits. 

Lawsuits could challenge the new map as racially discriminatory, though the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision raises the evidentiary standard for that claim. 

Lawsuits could also challenge the passage of the new map so close to the August primary for congressional seats. The qualifying deadline for the races was March 10, and candidates have been running campaigns for their original districts for months. Changing the map and offering just one week for candidates to qualify for new districts could confuse voters and impose administrative hurdles on election officials, opponents said.

The map’s Republican authors and backers repeatedly asserted that they were not aware of Memphis and Shelby County’s majority-Black demographics and that districts were drawn to “maximize partisan advantage” in hopes of electing Republicans in all nine of Tennessee’s U.S. House seats. 

Sen. John Stevens, a Huntington Republican, served as the Senate sponsor for the new map legislation. He listed several Democratic-controlled legislatures where district maps have been designed for “partisan advantage” during his introduction of the bill on the Senate floor Thursday.

After Supreme Court decision, lawsuits need ‘smoking gun’ evidence of discriminatory intent

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais dealt a serious blow to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits policies limiting the power of racial minority voters.

“Section 2 was one of the last remaining tools that voters of color could rely on to challenge discriminatory maps and election systems, and in this new ruling, the Supreme Court has now narrowed when and how Section 2 can be applied,” Tennessee ACLU Community Engagement Director Claire Gardner told nearly 500 attendees at a “Protect the South” informational webinar hosted by nonprofit organizing group Civic TN on Monday. 

“The Supreme Court has opined that redistricting, like the judicial system, should be color-blind,” Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Crossville Republican, wrote in a social media statement Wednesday. “The decision indicated states can redistrict based off partisan politics.”

The ACLU has litigated at least 16 cases in the past decade using Section 2, Gardner said.

“Now, the majority ruled that there must be evidence of discriminatory intent — smoking gun evidence — rather than just proving the discriminatory effects of maps,” she said. 

This type of discriminatory evidence is “extremely difficult to prove in the court of law,” Gardner continued, referring to Justice Elena Kagan’s assertion in the minority opinion that the court’s 6-3 decision “renders Section 2 all but a dead letter.”

“Smoking gun” evidence might include public statements from legislators or individuals who drew the maps admitting to intentionally diminishing Black voting power, Gardner said. It could also include leaked tapes of behind-closed-doors conversations to the same effect.

“Everything you can do to press the legislators to give reasons for why they’re drawing lines a certain way, everything you can do to try to hold them accountable, at this point, every public comment is helpful and moves the ball forward,” she said.

Challenges also remain possible under the 14th and 15th Amendments, which require equal protection and prohibit denying voting rights based on race. 

Senate Democrats’ comments hint at impending discrimination lawsuits

Before the map’s ultimate 25-5 passage Thursday afternoon along party lines, Tennessee Democratic senators questioned the bill’s sponsor, Stevens, on the map-drawing process.

“The goal of this legislation is to support the National Republican Party’s ability to maintain the majority in the United States Congress. It’s a razor-thin margin,” Stevens said.

Sen. London Lamar, a Memphis Democrat, asked Stevens if he was aware that Memphis is a predominantly African American city. 

“I am not,” Stevens said. Lamar pointed out that Stevens attended law school at the University of Memphis and lived there for three years.

“When you were drawing the lines, were you unaware or aware that you were slicing African American voters in Memphis, Tennessee, into three parts?” Lamar asked.

“This proposed map divides Shelby County into three districts. It maximizes the Republican chances of carrying all three districts,” Stevens said.

“You cannot take a majority Black city, fracture its voting power, and then tell us race has nothing to do with it,” Lamar said. “Racism does not become less racist because it’s called partisan.”

Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari asked if congressional maps in 2022 were drawn taking race into consideration for the boundaries of the 9th District, which encompassed Memphis. 

“This legislation modernizes Tennessee’s redistricting process by removing racial data from the mapping process entirely,” Stevens said, declining to address the 2022 maps.

Akbari asked if Stevens used 2020 U.S. Census data to draw the newest maps, and Stevens said he did. 

“Are you aware that Census data does not include partisan information?” Akbari asked.

“We’re required by law to use 2020 Census data,” he said.

Sen. Jeff Yarbro, a Nashville Democrat, said the new maps treat Black Democratic voters in the Memphis-Shelby County area differently than white Democratic voters. The area is now divided into three districts, two of which stretch from majority-Black Memphis to parts of Middle Tennessee to include portions of counties that are majority Republican and majority white. The third district is a relatively compact — and majority white — district.

“72% of the white population is put into one district. 75% of the Black population is carved into two,” Yarbro said. “We are being asked to believe that it’s just the luck of the draw, just happenstance.” 

White Democratic voters who live in the more compact district might not see their preferred candidate win elections, but they will still be able to easily reach the office of their congressman, Yarbro said. But the new map “creates two districts where the Black community is racially, geographically and politically isolated from power. From access … but for white Memphis, we keep following traditional redistricting criteria.”

Sen. Charlane Oliver, a Nashville Democrat, said courts assess intentional racial discrimination in redistricting using four measures — “the historical background of the decision, the sequence of events, departures from normal procedure, and a pattern of decisions affecting a particular group.”

Oliver pointed to the condensed timeline for the session, drawing and passage of the new map, highlighting that state lawmakers first needed to change a long-standing Tennessee law prohibiting redistricting between U.S. Census apportionments before the General Assembly could consider the new maps. She listed legislative actions over the last decade that she said constitute “a pattern of targeted legislative backlash against the political and civic process of Black Tennesseans.”

Election timeline-related challenges possible

Lawmakers also passed a companion bill restructuring the rules for Tennessee’s 2026 congressional elections.

The legislation gives candidates for U.S. House seats until May 15 — one week — to qualify for new districts or withdraw from the race. Political parties have until May 17 to decide whether candidates are qualified to run as bona fide party members. Candidates cannot appeal the party’s decision, a departure from normal election procedure. 

Candidates who have already qualified under the usual March 10 deadline would not need to re-qualify if they wish to run in the same numbered district, even if that district’s lines have been redrawn. 

The legislation also states that any civil action arising out of the redistricting or this bill will be heard by a three-judge panel.

Opponents of this compressed timeline cited Purcell v. Gonzalez, a 2006 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court decided rules should not be changed too close to an election to avoid causing confusion.

Yarbro also highlighted the Tennessee Supreme Court’s April 2022 decision to allow the U.S. House election to proceed despite legal challenges to a map that split Davidson County into three voting districts. An injunction before the election would “detrimentally” impact election officials by extending the candidate filing deadline, “as well as the public interest in ensuring orderly elections and avoiding voter confusion,” according to the ruling.
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