NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A Republican-drawn map for Tennessee Senate seats violates the state constitution because lawmakers incorrectly numbered legislative districts in left-leaning Nashville, affecting which years those seats are on the ballot, a judge ruled panel of judges Wednesday.
The ruling focuses on maps passed by the Republican legislature with a supermajority in 2022 during the once-a-decade redistricting process.
The Tennessee Constitution requires districts to be numbered consecutively in counties that have more than one district. The newly drafted redistricting plan does not do that in Davidson County, which includes Nashville. Instead it is numbered 17, 19, 20 and 21.
The numbering is important because four-year Senate terms are staggered, making some districts eligible in presidential elections and others in gubernatorial election cycles.
Currently, these four districts are represented by three Democrats and one Republican. There are 27 Republicans and 6 Democrats in the Senate.
According to Wednesday’s ruling, the state’s attorneys “conceded” that they would not defend the Senate map in court and instead turned their attention to arguing that the plaintiffs had no right to sue. The Tennessee statehouse map was also challenged in the lawsuit, although the state did defend those boundaries.
Ultimately, the three-judge panel upheld the House map and ordered the Tennessee Senate to come up with a new district layout by January 31, 2024.
A spokesman for Senate President Randy McNally, a Republican who previously defended the Senate map as legally sound, did not immediately return an emailed request for comment.
“Today’s court ruling against the gerrymandered Senate map is a clear victory for the Tennessee Constitution,” said Democratic Sens. Raumesh Akbari and London Lamar in a joint statement. “Even if a political party has a supermajority in the legislature, its members must still follow the law.”
Akbari and Lamar added that they looked forward to advocating for a “fair map and transparent process” in the coming weeks.
Separately, Democrats had argued that the House map also divides more counties than necessary to create districts with roughly equal populations, diluting the power of minority voters. The map divides 30 counties, the maximum allowed for the statehouse. The Tennessee Democratic Party said Wednesday it would continue to fight the ruling upholding the House map.
“Our fight for a constitutional map of the State House is not over,” Hendrell Remus, chairman of the state Democratic Party, said in a statement.
“Putting together a constitutional map is like putting together a complex puzzle because you cannot focus on a single factor to the exclusion of other constitutional factors… The nature of constructing a puzzle whose pieces inherently conflict means that a perfect map will never exist built by, nor required of, the General Assembly,” the justices wrote in their ruling.
Three voters filed the lawsuit in 2022, which was supported by the Tennessee Democratic Party. The state had argued that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the maps, but the panel of judges allowed the case to proceed, with one plaintiff eligible to challenge the House map, and another the map of the Senate could challenge.
In April 2022, the state-level panel of judges blocked the Senate map from taking effect. The state appealed and within a week the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned that decision and let the maps stand. The justices reasoned that lower court judges had not properly considered how blocking the map and extending the deadline for filing candidates would harm election officials and cause confusion among voters.