Tennessee Passes New Congressional Map Amid US Redistricting Wave
Al Jazeera
Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature approved a new congressional map on May 5 that splits the state’s only majority-minority district, as the U.S. Supreme Court weakens Voting Rights Act protections. The move is part of a national redistricting wave before the November midterms, with Republicans gaining seats. Critics say the map deliberately dilutes minority voting power, while GOP leaders defend it as maximizing partisan advantage.
On May 5, Tennessee’s Republican-dominated legislature and governor approved a new congressional map ahead of the U.S. midterm elections. The map carves up the state’s only district with a majority of voters of color.
The move comes amid a wave of redistricting across the United States before the November midterms, which will decide which party controls the House and Senate.
Typically, redistricting occurs after the once-a-decade census. But some state legislatures have sought to redraw maps mid-decade to create additional districts favoring their party.
The campaign began when President Donald Trump urged Texas’s Republican-controlled legislature to draw maps that would add five GOP-leaning districts. Subsequently, Republican- and Democratic-controlled legislatures in Missouri, California, Utah, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, and Texas followed suit.
The effort intensified after the U.S. Supreme Court last week ruled that a key provision of the 1973 Voting Rights Act—which barred measures that weaken minority voting power—was unconstitutional.
Under the ruling, plaintiffs must prove that a map was drawn with the intent to disenfranchise minority voters, a standard voting-rights advocates say is nearly impossible to meet.
Tennessee’s new map divides the only Democratic-held House district, centered in majority-Black Memphis. Historically, Black voters in the U.S. lean Democratic.
Opposition lawmakers argue the new map was deliberately drawn to dilute the voting power of people of color across all nine of Tennessee’s congressional districts.
Democratic Representative Justin Pearson of Tennessee said: “These maps are tools of white-supremacist racism, ordered by the most powerful racist in America, Donald J. Trump.”
Protesters held signs denouncing the redistricting as a “Jim Crow” effort, referencing the segregation laws that imposed division in many Southern states and cities during the 19th and 20th centuries.
Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican, insisted the new districts were drawn based on population and politics, not racial data.
State Senator John Stevens, a Tennessee Republican, said lawmakers across the U.S. routinely draw congressional maps to benefit their party—a process known as gerrymandering.
He said: “This bill represents Tennessee’s effort to maximize our partisan advantage.”
It remains unclear whether more states will redraw congressional maps before the midterms. Louisiana has paused its House primary after the Supreme Court ruling to conduct redistricting. Alabama is also seeking to redraw its map ahead of the November election.
Republicans have already gained more seats than Democrats in the current redistricting wave. This is expected to make the fight for control of the U.S. House more difficult, although election forecasters still rate a majority of the 435 House districts nationwide as leaning Democratic, setting up a tough race for Republicans.
