Tennessee Republicans redraw maps to erase last Democratic, Black-majority district

Tennessee’s Republican-dominated legislature passed redistricting maps on Thursday, eliminating the state’s one Democratic, Black-majority congressional district a week after the US supreme court effectively gutted a major section of the Voting Rights Act.

The move cracks Tennessee’s ninth congressional district, which covers Memphis, into three pieces, each of which contains almost exactly a third of the city’s Black voters. The new maps mean that all nine of Tennessee’s congressional districts are Republican-leaning.

The district had closely occupied the south-west corner of the state. Now three districts snake out from Memphis’ dense center, with two crossing the Tennessee River to reach Nashville’s suburbs 200 miles away.

“If Republican policies are so great, why are we changing the lines to rig elections?” asked Vincent Dixie, a state representative from Nashville, during debate on Thursday, pleading for Republicans to refrain. “Where is your humanity in this?”

As Democratic lawmakers spoke, the house speaker directed state troopers to remove a section of the audience in the gallery, which had begun shouting.

Justin Jones, a state Democratic representative, described Cameron Sexton, the Tennessee house speaker, as the “grand wizard in chief”, and handed a Republican lawmaker a Confederate flag. Jones offered amendments to the bill, which the speaker ruled had been submitted in an untimely manner. Jones described that as a “Jim Crow process”.

The redistricting comes eight days after the supreme court’s landmark Callais v Landry decision, which invalidated swaths of the Voting Rights Act which had restrained state governments from drawing congressional districts that left Black voters at a political disadvantage.

Despite demands from Donald Trump for conservative states to conduct mid-decade redistricting, Tennessee had refrained from taking action before the court’s ruling. But Sexton said the redraw will “ensure the state’s representation in Washington reflects its conservative values”.

Trump defeated Kamala Harris in Tennessee by 64-34 in the 2024 US presidential election. One third of Tennessee voters cast a ballot for a Democratic congressional representative in 2024. Republicans hold eight of the state’s nine congressional seats.

Testifying before a committee hearing in Tennessee on Wednesday, voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams said that the state’s general assembly had been asked “to dismantle the protections that helped bury the abomination of Jim Crow”.

“Democracy is an action – one that says I will share my power with those I disagree with because it is the only way to guarantee our common future,” said Abrams. “Backsliding into authoritarianism, where one party and one race holds dominion is unworthy of the Volunteer State. Whether by consequence or intention, it is wrong. It is unworthy of a nation that revolted when power was held by the few – a truth we celebrate 250 years hence.”

As is characteristic of Tennessee lawmakers, little regard was given to Democratic opposition, said Justin Pearson, a state representative and Memphis Democrat running to replace long-serving congressman Steve Cohen. Pearson was one of three Democratic lawmakers expelled from the state legislature for offering a floor protest over gun legislation in 2023.

Pearson described the legislation as the most significant thing Tennessee lawmakers will do in a generation, and that it is being done with perfunctory debate. After half an hour or so, the committee cleared out from the hearing room on Wednesday, to reconvene without the public present to pass the vote.

“Speakers who came to speak were given three minutes to talk. There was question and answer, and then they were told, even though there were four more bills that they could speak on, that that would be it,” said Pearson. “We had to force them to agree to time limit on the legislation, so that we would at least have some opportunity to speak on it, or members of the Republican Party would have called the question immediately.

“It’s mobcratic rule that we have here in our state, and that’s what happened with our expulsion.”

London Lamar, a state senator from Memphis, described the vote as an insult to her city.

“This past legislative session, you didn’t like our school board and took that over,” she said. “You didn’t like our airport authority and took that over. And now you don’t like the way Memphis votes. You’re going to take that away from us too. You cannot believe in local control while stripping Memphis voters from meaningful representation.

“You cannot claim to respect democracy while changing the rules after candidates have already qualified to run,” he added. “You are creating chaos on purpose.”

Lamar, Jeff Yarbro state senator from Nashville and other Democrats questioned Tennessee senate Republicans about the underlying intent of lawmakers with regard to race and partisanship.

Lamar noted that while Black voters have been split nearly evenly between three districts, 72% of white Democrats ended up in the newly drawn eighth district.

“That’s not how you do a partisan gerrymandering,” Lamar said. “Why does this map that we are considering here today treat the Black Democrats of Memphis so differently than the white Democrats of Memphis?”

“This proposed map maximizes the ability of Republicans to win nine seats in the upcoming midterm elections,” Johnson replied.

The Guardian wp:paragraph