NAACP Sues Tennessee Over Redistricting That Wiped Out State’s Only Majority-Black District

AP Photo/George Walker IV

The NAACP Tennessee State Conference filed a lawsuit after the state of Tennessee redrew its congressional districts to favor the GOP in all nine, eliminating the state’s only majority-Black district.

On Thursday, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed the new district lines into law, becoming the latest state to join the trend initially pushed by President Donald Trump to engage in a nontraditional mid-decade redistricting. Multiple states, under both Republican and Democratic majority control, have since redrawn their lines in a variety of ways under their laws, some by gubernatorial executive orders, some by bills passed by legislatures, and some through voter ballot initiatives.

It’s far from certain how the new district lines will truly play out in the midterms — several Republicans have expressed concerns that districts were drawn based on overly optimistic numbers from Trump’s 2024 victory that polls show the GOP may not be able to sustain in November — but it is clear that the new Tennessee districts carved up what had been a majority-Black district in Memphis, and distributed those voters among multiple other districts.

Shortly after Lee signed the new districts into law, the NAACP Tennessee State Conference filed a lawsuit against the governor and legislature challenging the redistricting.

In a statement announcing the lawsuit provided to Mediaite, Kristen Clarke, NAACP General Counsel, said:

It is a direct attack on our democracy and our Constitution to dismantle majority-Black districts. A democracy without Black representation is not a democracy. Black communities in Tennessee have been silenced and brutalized for centuries. This is where the KKK was born and where MLK was assassinated. Black residents were faced with racial violence and legal suppression every single day. And to vote, they were met with poll taxes and literacy tests designed to keep them silent. We’re outraged that the State, rather than seeking a more just and fair system, is seeking to roll Tennessee back to a time when many of us didn’t have equal rights. We will fight this map, tooth and nail.

The NAACP has previously filed other lawsuits this year challenging redistricting in other states, including Texas and Missouri.

In the 15-page complaint, the NAACP argued that Tennessee had engaged in an “unlawful late-decade congressional redistricting in violation of clear and unambiguous Tennessee statutory law and the mandates of the Tennessee Constitution,” specifically citing a state statute that establishes that the legislature “shall establish the composition of districts for the election of members of the house of representatives in congress after each enumeration and apportionment of representation by the congress of the United States,” and that “[t]he districts may not be changed between apportionments.”

Since the Tennessee General Assembly had “established the composition of districts” for congressional districts after the 2020 U.S. Census as usual, the complaint continued, and “May 2026 is a time between apportionments,” the redistricting was unlawful.

“This case is staggeringly easy for this Court to decide,” the complaint argued, citing the well-established legal precedent of following the clear meaning of statutory language, because “[p]ursuant to Section 2-16-102, mid decade redistricting is impermissible. Furthermore, there is a one-year district residency requirement for candidates for the House of Representatives.”

The complaint asks the court to declare that the “extraordinary session” that was called for the legislature violated the Tennessee Constitution, that state law prohibits the redistricting the legislature purported to pass, that the purported repeal of several sections of state law are void ab initio, for an injunction barring the governor and legislature from “from taking any step in furtherance of any purported redistricting arising out of the extraordinary session, including, but not limited to, sending notices to voters based upon the illegitimately derived congressional district boundaries arising out of the extraordinary session or conducting any elections, including primaries, using the illegitimately derived congressional districts arising out of the extraordinary session,” and the costs of the litigation.

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