Tennessee’s congressional gerrymander, which wiped out the state’s only Black-majority district, has drawn another lawsuit.
Black voters and civil rights groups, represented by the ACLU, filed suit in federal court Monday, charging that the GOP-led redraw, which cracked the city of Memphis into three districts, intentionally discriminated against Black voters in violation of the 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
“The racial impact and motivations behind the dismemberment of the State’s largest predominantly Black city, in order to deprive Black residents of the power to elect even a single member of the State’s congressional delegation, are evident on the face of the hastily enacted congressional map as well as the statements and actions of the all-White legislators who advanced the scheme,” the plaintiffs alleged.
Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling last month gutting the Voting Rights Act, which spurred Tennessee and other Southern states to redraw their maps, intentional discrimination in voting remains unconstitutional.
Tennessee’s gerrymander, which came after President Donald Trump directly pressured Gov. Bill Lee (R), took the state’s map from 6-1 Republican to 7-0 Republican.
The complaint details the lengths to which GOP lawmakers went to avoid acknowledging the racial motivations behind the gerrymander, saying they gave “bizarre, robotic answers to the most basic questions about the map,” that led to “almost comical dishonesty.”
“None of the sponsors of the plan would admit who actually drew it, and the lead Senate sponsor—a White legislator with over a decade of service in the Tennessee General Assembly who had attended law school in Memphis—would not say whether Memphis was predominantly Black and claimed not to know that Congressional District 9 was a majority- Black district,” the lawsuit alleges.
This is the second lawsuit filed against the gerrymander. The state NAACP sued May 7, challenging the map on other grounds.
