Judges dismiss suit alleging Tennessee’s political maps discriminate against communities of color

NASHVILLE, Tennessee — A federal judiciary committee has dismissed a lawsuit alleging that Tennessee’s U.S. House of Representatives and state Senate floor plans amount to unconstitutional racial gerrymandering.

“In short, the complaint alleges facts consistent with a racial gerrymander,” the ruling, issued Wednesday, said. “But the facts are also consistent with a political gerrymander.”

The complaint was the first lawsuit challenging a 2022 congressional district redistricting election. divided Democratic-leaning Nashville to help Republicans win seats in last year’s electiona move that critics said was aimed at weakening the power of black voters and other communities of color in one of the state’s few Democratic strongholds.

The lawsuit also challenged State Senate District 31 in Shelby County, which is majority Black and includes part of Memphis, with similar arguments, saying the white voting population has increased under the new maps. A Republican now holds that seat.

However, the three federal judges who wrote the ruling argued that there was another clear motivation behind the Republican supermajority in the Tennessee Legislature, pointing to “naked partisanship” as the likely “simple explanation.”

In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that disputes over partisan gerrymandering of congressional and legislative districts are not its business, confining those claims to state courts under their own constitutions and laws. Most recently, the high court upheld South Carolina’s congressional map in a 6-3 decision that said the state’s General Assembly did not use race to draw districts based on the 2020 census.

In the Tennessee case, plaintiffs included the Tennessee State Conference of the NAACP, the African American Clergy Collective of Tennessee, the Equity Alliance, the League of Women Voters of Tennessee and several Tennessee voters, including former Democratic Sen. Brenda Gilmore.

After Nashville was divided into three congressional districts, Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper of Nashville declined to seek re-electionclaiming he could not win under the new format. Ultimately, Rep. John Rose won re-election by about 33 percentage points, Rep. Mark Green won another term by 22 points, and Rep. Andy Ogles won his first term with 13 points in the district vacated by Cooper.

Tennessee now has eight Republicans in the House of Representatives, with only one Democrat remaining in Memphis Rep. Steve Cohen.

In the original complaint, the plaintiffs argued that all three “minority candidates of choice” lost their congressional seats in the Nashville area in 2022.

The justices held that the lawsuit “must show more than a reasonable doubt that Tennessee legislators knew that their Republican map would harm voters who favored Democratic candidates, including the higher percentage of minority groups who favored those candidates.”

The justices rejected Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s argument that the plaintiffs waited too long to file their appeal and also said the plaintiffs did not have to present their own map in their legal challenge. In their dismissal, the justices said the complaint could be refiled in the next 30 days as long as it was amended to “plausibly decouple race from politics.”

Republicans celebrated the ruling, with House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s office issuing a statement saying they were “pleased with the resolution of this matter so we can focus on what lies ahead for Tennessee.”

Notably, the ruling briefly addressed the ongoing controversy surrounding the Republican-dominated Statehouse, where Democrats allege racial discrimination in both legislative policies passed and actions taken recently by their GOP colleagues.

Ranging from the short expansion of two young black Democratic lawmakers to adopt legislation aimed at the trimming of Nashville’s left-wing city councilThe plaintiffs’ complaint contained several examples that they cited as evidence of a “discriminatory motive.”

The court argued that the examples had “little to do with district redrawing,” but noted that they suggested “the possibility of misconduct.”

Meanwhile, a lawsuit is still ongoing over Tennessee’s legislative maps, based on the state constitution.