The Tennessee General Assembly on Thursday approved a new congressional map that will likely eliminate the state’s sole Democrat in the U.S. House ahead of the November election.
The GOP-led legislature passed the new map in a special session following the April 29 Supreme Court decision allowing states more authority to ditch racially gerrymandered districts.
The ruling has provoked a last-ditch scramble in Tennessee and several other red states to redraw congressional lines ahead of the November election.
These efforts across the South follow a nationwide gerrymandering war after Texas, at the urging of President Trump, conducted a mid-decade redistricting to boost Republicans in the midterms.
Recently, California and Virginia created new maps favoring Democrats.
In Tennessee, scores of protesters packed the State Capitol in Nashville to protest the redrawn district lines. They shouted from the spectator galleries in the House and Senate chambers as the map was debated and ultimately passed on party lines in both chambers.
The map redraws a majority-Black district now held by Rep. Steve Cohen, a Democrat. Republicans admitted the redraw was aimed at boosting their congressional candidates in November.
“This proposed map maximizes the ability of Republicans to win nine seats in the upcoming midterm elections,” said Sen. John Stevens, a Republican and sponsor of the bill.
Democratic lawmakers said the redistricting will hurt Black representation in Memphis, a city that helped launch the Civil Rights Movement and where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
The redrawn lines divide the city, diluting the Black vote.
“It is the dilution of a voice that generations of people bled for, that marched for, that prayed for, that died to build,” said Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Democrat who represents Memphis.
Tennessee is among a growing list of states scrambling to redraw congressional lines in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling.
The Supreme Court decision struck down a racially gerrymandered congressional district in Louisiana by ruling the Voting Rights Act can’t be used to force states to add more minority districts to their maps unless there is clear evidence of racial discrimination.
Louisiana’s legislature meets on Friday to consider a new map that eliminates at least one of the state’s two racially gerrymandered districts. The state has suspended an ongoing congressional primary to give the GOP-led legislature time to draw new lines.
South Carolina lawmakers this week began the process of redistricting congressional lines. The redrawn map would likely eliminate the only seat represented by a Democrat, Rep. James Clyburn, the former U.S. House majority whip.
The Alabama legislature met this week in a special session to consider a congressional map that would revert to the 2023 lines drawn by GOP lawmakers. The 2023 map would reshape a district represented by Rep. Shormari Figures, a Black Democrat. Republicans also want to eliminate another Democrat-leaning district represented by Rep. Terri Sewell, who is also Black.
