Tennessee Voters Sue to Block Redrawn Congressional Map that Discriminates Against and Silences Black Memphians 

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Tennessee filed a federal lawsuit today challenging Tennessee’s discriminatory new congressional redistricting map.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of three individual Memphis voters, as well as the Black Clergy Collaborative of Memphis, the Memphis A. Philip Randolph Institute, and the Equity Alliance, who are seeking to block the map from taking effect before the August primary election.

Tennessee has had a Memphis-based congressional district for the better part of a century. The challenged map dismantles that district, which is the state’s only majority-Black congressional district. It divides Black voters in Memphis and Shelby County across three majority-white districts that stretch from Memphis hundreds of miles into central Tennessee, diluting Black Memphians’ votes and stripping those communities of any meaningful voice in Congress.

“Black voters in Memphis did exactly what the Constitution empowers every American to do, which is to choose their representative,” said ACLU of Tennessee Executive Director Miriam R. Nemeth. “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.”

A white-controlled supermajority of the Tennessee General Assembly enacted the new map targeting Black Memphians over mere days in a special legislative session that had been called after the candidate-qualifying deadline had already run.

The process for drawing and enacting the maps was unprecedented and suspect. Mid-decade congressional redistricting has been illegal under state law for over 50 years. The General Assembly has never engaged in mid-decade congressional redistricting in its modern history, let alone done so at warp speed, with no public debate, and in May of an election year. The map’s white sponsors never disclosed basic facts about the map, like who drew it, or what data was used.

“Every American schoolchild learns that, not so long ago, white-controlled governments in some states exercised total power to discriminate, punish, and shut Black citizens out of power. Schoolchildren also learn that we overcame that injustice, through great struggle and sacrifice, and that our deepest-held constitutional values triumphed in the end. But today, again, a white-dominated faction is viciously stripping hard-won power from Black Tennesseans,” said Ari J. Savitzky, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. “We seek to enforce the Constitution’s fundamental guarantees in the face of this all-too-familiar injustice. We ask the courts to strike these maps down.”

The recent Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, stripping a critical federal protection against decades of discriminatory voting systems. It opened the door for states to try to enact discriminatory maps.

The complaint asserts that the Tennessee map violates the U.S. Constitution on two grounds:

• Intentional racial discrimination against Black voters in Memphis.

• First Amendment retaliation against Black voters in Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District for exercising their right to political expression and association.

The lawsuit asks the court to declare the new map unconstitutional and to restore the prior congressional district lines before any primary election proceeds under the new boundaries.

The complaint is here.