Tennessee Republicans unveiled new congressional maps Wednesday morning that would likely help their party gain an extra seat in Congress as a special session on redistricting continues this week.
The proposal would split Memphis into three districts and further fracture Nashville and its surrounding counties into five. If passed, all of Tennessee’s nine congressional districts would be presented by Republicans in a state where roughly a third of voters supported Democrats in the past two presidential elections.
Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District, which has historically represented Memphis in the U.S. House, would stretch from the bottom of the city to the edge of Nashville, a distance spanning nearly 300 miles.
During routine redistricting in 2022, the state’s Republican supermajority carved Nashville into three districts but kept Memphis whole because of federal voting protections for the majority-Black district. Since a recent U.S. Supreme Court weakened that section of the Voting Rights Act, President Donald Trump has called on states to redistrict areas they previously couldn’t touch.
The Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators has decried the Court’s decision — and Gov. Bill Lee’s call for a special session to redistrict.
“There’s no way to sugarcoat eliminating a district that is 61% Black,” said Sen. Raumesh Akbari, D-Memphis. “You are deliberately trying to silence the voices of a community.”
In unveiling the new maps, Republican leadership said the move will “modernize” Tennessee’s redistricting process by taking racial data out of consideration.
“Tennessee is a conservative state, and our congressional delegation should reflect that,” said Sen. John Stevens, R-Huntingdon, who is sponsoring the maps.
Other Republicans have balked at the new maps, like first-term Rep. Michele Reneau, R-Signal Mountain.
“If the goal is to reflect voters, we could look at recent election results. In the last presidential election, Tennessee voters split roughly 60% Republican and 40% Democrat,” Reneau wrote. “A proportional approach would reflect that balance more closely than a map designed for a single-party outcome.”
State lawmakers may be feeling the pressure to aid President Trump’s redistricting efforts. The new maps come on the heels of Indiana’s primaries Tuesday night, where Trump ousted state Republicans who opposed his redistricting plan for the state last year.
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