NAACP, League of Women Voters allege Tennessee redistricting intentionally discriminates

Tennessee’s redrawn congressional voting map intentionally discriminates against Black voters in Memphis, unconstitutionally undermining fair representation for partisan and racial advantage, a lawsuit filed Thursday by civil and voting rights groups alleges.

Filed in federal court by the Tennessee branches of the NAACP and League of Women Voters, Memphis community groups and Memphis voters, the lawsuit seeks an immediate halt to the implementation of the newly drawn maps adopted over a three-day legislative special session last week. 

Arguing that the redistricting process reflected a deliberate intent on the part of Republican lawmakers to discriminate against Black voters, the lawsuit lays out a “recent history of racial incidents and statements” inside the Tennessee Legislature. 

They include the 2023 expulsion of two Black lawmakers protesting gun violence, a bust of the KKK’s founder that remained in the capitol until 2021 despite years of protest, legislation barring public school teachers from discussing racism and one Republican lawmaker’s suggestion in 2023 that “hanging by a tree” ought to be an option for the death penalty in Tennessee. 

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“Put simply, the General Assembly, several times with(in) the past ten years…has considered it its mission to preserve symbols of white supremacy and to honor those who considered Black persons inferior,” the lawsuit states.

Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the national NAACP, said in a statement that the lawsuit “goes to the heart of our democracy.”

“Tennessee lawmakers made a deliberate choice to silence Black voters by dismantling a district that has long ensured representation for one of the state’s largest Black populations,” he said. “We are at the dawn of a new Jim Crow era. People fought and died for the representation that lawmakers across the South are so casually eroding.”

A spokesperson for the Tennessee Secretary of State, named as defendant, declined comment on pending litigation.

Thursday’s lawsuit is the fourth legal challenge to Tennessee’s redistricting process since Gov. Bill Lee on May 7 signed into law newly drawn maps that divide majority-Black, majority-Democrat Memphis into three districts, each stretching across the state to encompass rural and suburban voters just outside Nashville.

Republicans repeatedly argued the map’s new dividing lines were drawn for partisan advantage and had no basis in race, the lawsuit notes.

Asked what data was used as the basis for redrawing the map, House Speaker Cameron Sexton and Rep. Jason Zachary said the Census was the sole source of data.

The Census, the lawsuit notes, does not include political party affiliations, but it does include racial demographic information. 

Despite Memphis’ longstanding demographic makeup — the city is the largest majority-Black city in the United States — Republican lawmakers, including Sexton, refused to acknowledge during debate that they were aware of the city’s racial composition, the lawsuit notes. 

“The notion that the General Assembly somehow did not know, even without looking at the specific racial demographics of the 2020 Census, that the vast majority of the population of Memphis is Black is far-fetched and defies credulity,” the lawsuit said.

The NAACP Tennessee Conference is also a plaintiff in a separate lawsuit filed in Davidson County Chancery Court challenging the process the governor and legislature undertook to redraw the maps as a violation of state law and the Tennessee Constitution. 

In federal court, the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee is challenging the new map as racially discriminatory and a First Amendment retaliation against Black voters. 

And another lawsuit brought by Democratic U.S. House candidates, the Tennessee Democratic Party and voters argues the redistricting plan, enacted just three months ahead of the Aug. 6 primary election, will lead to chaos and confusion.

State responds to Tennessee NAACP lawsuit challenging redistricted map

The NAACP’s most recent lawsuit makes several arguments intended to demonstrate discriminatory intent in violation of the 14th and 15th Amendments in creating the new District 9 map.

District 9 has included all of Memphis and most of Shelby County for 50 years. Past redistricting efforts have taken factors such as geographic compactness and preservation of communities of interest into account, the lawsuit noted.

Plaintiffs also point to “departures from normal procedures” in initiating the redistricting process. 

The special session was called by Gov. Bill Lee at the request of President Donald Trump days after the U.S. Supreme Court weakened a key section of the Voting Rights Act. The Legislature has never redrawn maps between Census years absent a court order. Tennessee lawmakers had to repeal a 50-year-old law that bars such mid-decade redistricting in order to proceed with redistricting this year.

The lawsuit also alleges that the map was pushed through the legislative process in just 48 hours with minimal transparency, little opportunity for meaningful public input, and despite repeated warnings that it would weaken Black political representation.

 The Legislature “ran roughshod over longstanding principles” the lawsuit states. 

“The rejection of these principles signals the abandonment of normal legislative objectives, and the pursuit instead of racially-motivated goals. 

“A further signal of racial motivation is that the new map met those goals. It now denies Black voters in Congressional District 9 the opportunity, that they previously enjoyed, to elect their candidates of choice.”
TN Federal Complaint