Tennessee GOP passes new House map reshaping Memphis after Voting Rights Act ruling

Tennessee enacts new House map after lawmakers pass districts amid protests

Tennessee lawmakers enacted a new U.S. House district map on Thursday, drawing protests in the Senate and House as Republicans approved new congressional boundaries aimed at reshaping political advantage ahead of the November midterms. The final approval came in a special session, followed by action from Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who signed the legislation into law.

Republican leadership adjourned the special session after the Senate vote, sending the map to Lee, who “promptly signed it into law,” according to the Associated Press. In the Senate chamber, Democratic state Sen. Charlane Oliver held a banner denouncing the redistricting as a “Jim Crow” effort, then clapped and danced. Other Democratic senators linked arms in the front of the chamber as the vote concluded.

Protesters also disrupted the Republican-led House as lawmakers voted on the new map, yelling, chanting and blowing air horns. In the hallways, other shouting protesters were held back by Tennessee state troopers.

After the map became law, the NAACP Tennessee State Conference filed a lawsuit in state court, arguing that the mid-decade redistricting is illegal. The AP reported the suit came “not long after” Lee signed the plan.

The map breaks up Tennessee’s lone Democratic-held district centered on the majority-Black city of Memphis. The state’s geographically compact 9th District, which currently includes Memphis and is represented by Steve Cohen, will stretch a couple hundred miles eastward and then extend north toward the Nashville suburbs under the new boundaries.

Democrats said the changes target the voting power of Black residents in Memphis, disputing Republican descriptions of the map as nonracial. State Rep. Justin Pearson, a Black Democrat running for the U.S. House, said, “These maps are racist tools of white supremacy at the behest of the most powerful white supremacist in the United States of America, Donald J. Trump.” Republican state Sen. John Stevens defended the districts he sponsored by saying the proposal reflected partisan calculations similar to those used by Democrats elsewhere, telling lawmakers: “This bill represents Tennessee’s attempt to maximize our partisan advantage.”

Sen. London Lamar, a Democrat from Memphis, said the plan would come at the expense of both Memphis residents and democratic governance, arguing, “You cannot take a majority Black city, fracture its voting power and then tell us race has nothing to do with it.” Democrats also pointed to timing constraints and said the state Supreme Court in April 2022 rejected a challenge to the prior map because it was too close to the election to make changes, arguing there is now even less time before the Aug. 6 primary.

Tennessee’s lawmakers also made related changes to election administration as the redistricting battle accelerates in the South. As a first step to adopting the new House districts, Tennessee lawmakers repealed a state law that had prohibited mid-decade redistricting, according to the AP. Another new law reopened candidate qualifying until May 15, creating time for new participants in the U.S. House primaries and allowing existing candidates to switch districts or drop out.

The Tennessee vote comes after a U.S. Supreme Court decision last week significantly weakened federal Voting Rights Act protections for minorities, the AP reported, and states are beginning to respond. Tennessee is the ninth state to redraw its congressional districts since Trump prodded Texas Republicans to do so last year, and the AP reported Republicans think they could gain as many as 14 seats while Democrats think they could gain up to 10—though the outcome could vary by competitive races.

The AP said the Supreme Court’s ruling weakened a decades-old understanding of how the Voting Rights Act applies after it said Louisiana relied too heavily on race when creating a second Black-majority House district to comply with federal law. Louisiana postponed its congressional primary to give lawmakers time to craft a new House map, while legislation awaiting a final vote Friday in Alabama would upend that state’s congressional primaries if courts allow changes to its U.S. House districts.

In Alabama, Republicans advanced legislation in an audience that erupted in shouts of “shame” after lawmakers authorized special primaries if Alabama can put in place a new congressional map for the November midterms. The AP reported Alabama asked federal judges to lift an order requiring the state to have a second district where Black voters are the majority or close to it, noting that district helped elect Rep. Shomari Figures, a Black Democrat, in 2024. The Republicans’ approach would use a map lawmakers drew in 2023 that a federal court rejected, and would shift Black residents’ share of the district’s voting-age population from about 48% to about 39% under that 2023 map, the AP reported.

If the court grants Alabama’s request, the AP said the legislation under consideration would ignore May 19 primary results for congressional seats and require the governor to schedule a new primary under the revised districts, with the House having passed the legislation on a party-line vote Wednesday and a final Senate vote expected Friday. Addressing a Senate committee, Figures said his concern was not for himself but for the people who fought for decades “to have a voice in what government looks like.”

In South Carolina, the AP said Republican state House members distributed a proposed new U.S. House map for review on the state House floor. The proposal would remove Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn from the 6th District he has represented since 1992, splitting his district into four different districts, and would also split Columbia and its redder suburbs into four different districts. The AP reported South Carolina’s primary elections are June 9 and that the House approved a resolution allowing lawmakers to return after May 14 to continue consideration of a redistricting plan that would require a two-thirds vote of the Senate.

This article references a federally weakened Voting Rights Act environment and describes state redistricting efforts as they move toward primaries and midterm elections, following a Supreme Court decision that Republicans have said offers new room to redraw majority-Black districts.