Tennessee’s Republican-led Legislature passed a new congressional map dividing up the state’s lone majority-Black district, swiftly responding to the U.S. Supreme Court’s major redistricting ruling last week.
The redrawn district lines, which Gov. Bill Lee signed into law, put Republicans in position to gain a seat in this fall’s midterm elections and secure full control over Tennessee’s congressional delegation.
The new map carves up a Memphis-based seat held by longtime Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., into three districts, spreading the Democratic voters into more rural, Republican districts that stretch hundreds of miles east. It further divides the Nashville metropolitan area, the state’s other Democratic stronghold, into five districts.
The long districts run across Tennessee’s distinct geographic regions and tie voters from different media markets and time zones together to achieve the desired partisan impact.
Lee moved quickly to call lawmakers into a special session this week to take up a new map proposal ahead of Tennessee’s Aug. 6 primaries.
The state House passed the map without any Republican speaking in defense of it. When one member rose to speak, members of the public watching the proceedings from the gallery began chanting and yelling so loudly that the House speaker called the vote as Democratic members stood and walked out on the session.
“This is not a special session. This is a white-power rally and a white-power grab,” said Democratic state Rep. Gloria Johnson, who represents Knoxville. “Vote yes — you’re telling everyone you’re racist.”
As the state Senate discussed the map, protesters chanting outside the chamber could be heard.
“Tennessee is a conservative state,” said state Sen. John Stevens, a Republican who sponsored the bill. “Its congressional delegation should reflect that.”
Stevens said the maps were drawn to elect more Republicans using census data, which Democrats questioned, noting the census does not include partisan data.
Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat and the caucus’ minority leader, urged her colleagues to vote against the map.
“When you had an opportunity to do right, did you beat people back on Edmund Pettus Bridge?” she said in a floor speech. “When you had an opportunity to do right, did you vote to make sure that those Black folks in Memphis who believe in this state, who pay their taxes, who work just like everyone else, have a right to be politically represented as well by folks who share their interest and who advocate for them on a federal level?”
As in the House, the map passed the Senate amid shouting from protesters and Democratic lawmakers. One senator stood on a desk with what appeared to be a bedsheet emblazoned with “No Jim Crow 2.0” and “Stop the TN Steal.” Other members turned their backs on the Senate dais.
Tennessee becomes the ninth state to enact a new congressional map ahead of the midterms, an unusually active mid-decade redistricting cycle that started last year when President Donald Trump urged Republican-led states to redraw their lines to shore up the party’s narrow House majority.
Republicans could pick up as many as 14 seats as a result of the campaign, compared with upward of 10 for Democrats, though several maps still face litigation.
A seismic Supreme Court ruling last week that effectively eliminated the racial gerrymandering protections from the Voting Rights Act has further supercharged the trend. Louisiana and Alabama Republicans are laying the groundwork to redraw their maps, while South Carolina lawmakers are debating whether to do the same. The three states have five majority-minority districts represented by Democrats among them.
And that’s likely to be just the start: Other states where filing deadlines and primary dates have already passed are looking at the 2028 election cycle for potential new maps.
