Republican Gov. Bill Lee ordered the Tennessee General Assembly to reconvene and review the state’s congressional map.
NASHVILLE—The Tennessee General Assembly passed a bill on May 7 that would redistrict the state’s U.S. congressional map ahead of the midterms.
The legislation now heads to the state Senate.
The proposal splits the Democratic stronghold of Memphis into three U.S. congressional seats, up from one, currently held by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.).
If the bill becomes law, all of Tennessee’s nine congressional districts would likely lean Republican, which could eliminate the only Democratic voice representing the Volunteer State in the midterms.
Cohen—who currently represents District 9 covering parts of Shelby County, including the city of Memphis, and Tipton County— called redistricting efforts “a blatant, corrupt power grab that would destroy the Black community’s and our entire city’s voice,” in a May 6 post on X.
State Democrats said the attempt to redistrict the state was racist and illegal after Republican Gov. Bill Lee had ordered the Tennessee General Assembly to review the state’s congressional map on May 1.
The order followed a landmark Supreme Court decision about the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in April.
State Rep. Jason Powell, a Democrat, said that Tennessee code allows redistricting only every 10 years, and that the attempt to redraw the map was against the law.
“We ought to rename our state Washington, Tennessee, because we are here doing the work of D.C., we might as well rename the state capitol the White House,” Powell said on the House floor on Thursday.
State Rep. Gloria Johnson, a Democrat, called the special session “a white power rally and a white power grab.”
State Rep. Justin Jones, also a Democrat, handed state Rep. William Lamberth, a Republican, the Confederate flag and accused him of trying to bring Tennessee “back to the Confederacy.”
State House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican, said the redistricting was based on population numbers and not designed to split voters in a black-majority district into three other districts.
“On our software, when we put that map into ours, we turned all that data off so that the only thing that was referenced in our map was population,” Sexton said during the special session on May 6.
Sexton would not confirm whether any attempt was made to avoid dividing Shelby County, where Memphis sits.
By Jacki Thrapp
