Three Memphis voters have become the faces of a federal lawsuit challenging Tennessee’s new congressional redistricting map.¶
On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Tennessee ACLU announced in a statement that the organizations have filed the lawsuit on behalf of the three voters, as well as the Black Clergy Collaborative of Memphis, the Memphis A. Phillip Randolph Institute, and the Equity Alliance. Their goal is to block the new map from taking effect before this year’s primary election in August.¶
The statement called the process for drawing and enacting the map, “unprecedented and suspect.”¶
“Black voters in Memphis did exactly what the Constitution empowers every American to do, which is to choose their representative,” ACLU of Tennessee Executive Director Miriam R. Nemeth said in a statement. “The legislature’s response was an effort to ensure that those votes never carry the same weight again. The law has a name for this, and it’s not redistricting, it is textbook First Amendment retaliation. And it is, at its heart, racism.”¶
The lawsuit claims the new congressional map violates the U.S. Constitution through intentional racial discrimination against Black voters in Memphis and First Amendment retaliation against Black voters in the state’s 9th Congressional District for “exercising their right to political expression and association. These were topics of debate during the House meeting on May 7, when the map was officially passed.¶
The lawsuit asks the U.S. District Court for Middle Tennessee to strike down the new map as unconstitutional and restore the prior congressional district lines before the primary election.¶
What Led To This?
On May 1, Governor Bill Lee called on Tennessee lawmakers to return to the Capitol to pass a new congressional map that increases the likelihood that Republicans will win all nine Tennessee Congressional districts in the midterms.¶
The move followed last month’s U.S. Supreme Court decision that weakened the Civil Rights Act and opened the door for more redistricting nationwide. Under the ruling, race cannot be the primary factor in creating congressional districts, but lawmakers can create maps based on political considerations. This reduced protections for majority-minority districts like Tennessee’s Congressional District 9 in Memphis, currently held by Congressman Steve Cohen, D-TN.¶
The new map approved last week splits the Memphis district into three, giving Republicans an opportunity to pick up the House seat. It also includes changes to districts beyond Memphis, leaving some current congressmen, like Rep. Andy Ogles, R-TN, no longer living in the district they currently represent.¶
Democratic representatives were quick to call the map racist and a violation of the will of Memphis’s voters during the House session in which the new map was passed, but Republicans pushed back on that throughout the redistricting process.¶
Representative Jason Zachary, R-Knoxville, insisted on the House floor that the map was drawn for political purposes alone and would not violate the U.S. Constitution.¶
“It's important to know that the map that you have in front of you was drafted based on the population related to the last census, but it was absolutely drafted on politics, based on court rulings,” Zachary said. “This gives us a unique opportunity to, for the first time in history, to have an all-Republican delegation sent from Tennessee to Washington D.C. to represent conservative values, to represent conservative principles. And this gives us a historic opportunity, and so we're taking advantage of that as the super majority in this body.”¶
What Happens Next
State Representative John Ray Clemmons, D-Nashville, posted on social media on Tuesday that a court hearing has been set for May 20 to determine if a temporary restraining order should be placed on the new congressional map.¶
That court hearing is five days after the new deadline lawmakers passed for congressional candidates who want to change the district they’re running in under the new map, and for new candidates to qualify for the primary who weren’t planning to run previously.¶
