NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit alleging that Tennessee’s U.S. House and state Senate maps amounted to unconstitutional gerrymandering based on race.
“In summary, the complaint alleges facts consistent with a racist gerrymandering allegation,” the ruling announced on Wednesday said. “But the facts are also consistent with a political gerrymandering allegation.”
The lawsuit was the first legal challenge to a 2022 congressional district reapportionment. Democratic-leaning Nashville was divided in a way that allowed Republicans to gain a seat in last year’s election. Critics claimed the move was made to weaken the power of black voters and other communities of color in one of the state’s few Democratic strongholds.
The lawsuit also targeted the 31st Senate District in the majority-black Shelby County, which includes part of Memphis. It used similar arguments, claiming that the number of white voters increased after the new maps were drawn. That seat is now held by a Republican.
However, the three federal judges who wrote the ruling argued that there was another clear motive for the Republican two-thirds majority in the Tennessee state legislature, citing “naked partisanship” as a likely “simple explanation.”
In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that disputes over partisan gerrymandering of congressional and legislative districts were none of its business, limiting those claims to state courts under their own constitutions and laws. Most recently, in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court upheld South Carolina’s congressional mapping ruling that the state’s General Assembly did not consider race when drawing districts based on the 2020 census.
Plaintiffs in the Tennessee case included the Tennessee State Conference of the NAACP, the African American Clergy Collective of Tennessee, the Equity Alliance, the League of Women Voters of Tennessee, and several Tennessee voters, including former Democratic Senator Brenda Gilmore.
After Nashville was divided into three congressional districts, former Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper of Nashville decided not to run again, claiming he could not win under the new division. Ultimately, Rep. John Rose won re-election by about 33 percentage points, Rep. Mark Green won another term by 22 percentage points, and Rep. Andy Ogles won his first term by 13 percentage points in the district vacated by Cooper.
Tennessee currently has eight Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, with only one Democrat remaining, Representative Steve Cohen of Memphis.
In the original lawsuit, the plaintiffs argued that all three “preferred candidates” of minority voters in the Nashville area in 2022 had lost their congressional elections.
The judges countered that the lawsuit “must more than plausibly allege that Tennessee state legislators knew that their Republican-friendly map would harm voters who favored Democratic candidates – including the higher percentage of minority voters who favored those candidates.”
The justices rejected Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s argument that the plaintiffs waited too long to file their lawsuit, and also said the plaintiffs do not need to present their own map in their lawsuit. In their dismissal, the justices said the lawsuit could be refiled within the next 30 days as long as it is amended to “plausibly separate race and politics.”
Republicans celebrated the ruling. The office of House Speaker Cameron Sexton issued a statement saying they were “glad there is a resolution to this matter so we can focus on what lies ahead for Tennessee.”
Most notably, the ruling also addresses the ongoing controversies surrounding the Republican-dominated Statehouse, where Democrats have alleged racial discrimination in both legislation and recent actions by their GOP colleagues.
The plaintiffs’ lawsuit cited several examples they cited as evidence of a “discriminatory motive,” ranging from the brief exclusion of two young black Democratic lawmakers to the passage of a law aimed at drastically downsizing Nashville’s left-leaning City Council.
The court responded that the examples had “little to do with redistricting,” but noted that they pointed to “the possibility of misconduct.”
Meanwhile, another lawsuit is pending against Tennessee’s maps on constitutional grounds.
