A group of voters, civil rights leaders and a former state lawmaker are suing to block the redistricting maps that Tennessee created last year. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court, alleges that Tennessee’s Republican supermajority intentionally limited the power of Black voters when it split Nashville into three separate congressional districts.
In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that partisan gerrymandering claims are not subject to federal review. Damon Hewitt, who represents the plaintiffs, says the difference between partisan and racial gerrymandering isn’t always clear.
“We can’t simply allow these jurisdictions to … put on a mask and say, ‘Oh, it’s not racist, it’s just partisan,’ when we actually have the evidence to suggest otherwise,” Hewitt says.
The evidence, according to the plaintiffs, is in last year’s election results. They say candidates favored by voters of color lost by large margins compared to previous election cycles.
“This new redistricting plan ripped neighborhoods like mine apart,” says former state Sen. Brenda Gilmore. “The redistricting plan attacked African American voters … and the legislature did it for the sole purpose of preventing us from coming together to elect candidates who we choose.”
The coalition of plaintiffs includes The Tennessee State Conference of the NAACP, the African American Clergy Collective of Tennessee, the Equity Alliance, the Memphis A. Philip Randolph Institute, the League of Women Voters of Tennessee and several individual Tennessee voters.
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