A federal judicial panel has given Tennessee the green light to proceed with a newly redrawn congressional map that divides a Memphis district that has long had a majority-Black population, handing Republicans another legal win as they work to strengthen their hold on the U.S. House in this fall’s midterm elections.
The three-judge panel declined Thursday to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the new district lines, allowing them to be used in the August 6 primary elections. Tennessee had redrawn its congressional boundaries in May, shortly after a U.S. Supreme Court decision that weakened federal Voting Rights Act protections for minority communities.
President Donald Trump has pushed Republican-controlled states to redraw their districts in ways that favor the GOP, hoping to preserve a narrow House majority heading into November. Tennessee is one of eight Republican-led states to have done so since last year. Trump is hoping the mid-decade redistricting effort can help Republicans break the historical trend of the president’s party losing congressional seats during midterm elections.
Those challenging the new map argued in court that Republican state lawmakers who approved the plan were at least partially motivated by racial discrimination, which would violate the U.S. Constitution.
Republicans countered that their decisions were driven purely by political goals — specifically, flipping the only Democratic-held seat among Tennessee’s nine congressional districts. Under a 2019 Supreme Court ruling, legislatures are permitted to draw maps for partisan advantage.
The three judges — two appointed by Trump and one appointed by former President Barack Obama — wrote in their opinion that the legal challenge is unlikely to succeed because the plaintiffs “lack any direct evidence of racial motivation.”
“The road to a reliably 9-0 map runs through Memphis,” the ruling states. “Thus, political motivations readily explain the map’s dilutive effects.”
The backdrop to this case is a late April Supreme Court ruling that struck down a majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana as an illegal racial gerrymander. That decision weakened protections under the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 that had given minority communities the opportunity to elect candidates of their choosing. It also opened a door for Republicans in several Southern states to cite political intentions while redrawing districts with large minority populations that have historically elected Democrats.
In Tennessee, Republicans restructured a Memphis-area district with a majority-Black population that had been represented for roughly two decades by Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen, who is white. The Memphis metropolitan area was divided among three separate districts, with Cohen’s reconfigured district stretching several hundred miles to the east before curving northward toward the Nashville suburbs.
Cohen announced shortly after the redistricting that he would not seek reelection.
Amber Sherman, a Memphis voter and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, condemned the ruling, saying it is “painful” to face an election under a map that she believes diminishes the power of Black voters.
“We deserve the same opportunity to shape our future as anyone else,” Sherman said. “When our voting power is diluted, our neighborhoods have a harder time making their voices heard on the issues that shape our daily lives.”
Ari Savitzky, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union Voting Rights Project, told the judges in mid-June that Republicans — who he described as “essentially an all-white-controlled legislative body” — chose to dismantle the only significant concentration of Black political power in Tennessee’s federal elections.
Attorney Taylor Meehan, representing Tennessee election officials, rejected the claim of racially discriminatory intent. She also argued that reverting to the previous district boundaries was no longer practical, pointing out that primary election ballots had already been finalized under the new lines. Early voting in the state began on July 17.
“Racial data was turned off” during the mapmaking process, Meehan told the court. “The map was drafted for politics.”
