Tennessee Republicans have erased the state’s last Black majority congressional district, splitting Memphis into three GOP-leaning seats.
Summary
- Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a new congressional map splitting Memphis, a majority-Black city, into three separate districts.
- The move comes eight days after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act’s racial gerrymandering protections in a major redistricting ruling.
- The new map positions Republicans to win all nine of Tennessee’s US House seats and draws out the state’s only Democratic congressman, Steve Cohen.
Tennessee Republicans have erased the state’s last Black majority congressional district, splitting Memphis into three GOP-leaning seats.
The Republican-controlled legislature passed the new map on May 7 and Governor Bill Lee immediately signed it into law, making Tennessee the first state to enact a new congressional map directly following last week’s Supreme Court ruling that gutted the Voting Rights Act’s racial gerrymandering protections.
The new map carves up the Memphis-anchored 9th Congressional District, held by Democrat Steve Cohen since 2007, spreading its voters into three separate districts that stretch hundreds of miles east into rural Republican territory. Nashville, the state’s other Democratic stronghold, is further divided into five districts under the plan.
What the Democrats said
Democratic lawmakers staged open protests on the chamber floor. Senator London Lamar said before the Senate adopted the map: “Black bodies lay in rivers and in fields all across this country because they dared to speak out for representation and the right to vote.”
State Representative Justin Jones handed Republican Majority Leader William Lamberth a printed Confederate flag on the chamber floor as a protest.
Republican sponsor Senator John Stevens defended the map by saying Tennessee is a conservative state and its congressional delegation should reflect that. Democrats challenged that framing, noting the census data Republicans claimed to use does not include partisan information.
Broader redistricting wave
Tennessee becomes the ninth state to enact a new congressional map ahead of the November midterms, part of an unusually active mid-decade redistricting cycle that began after President Trump urged Republican-led states to redraw their lines to protect his party’s slim House majority. Louisiana and Alabama are laying the groundwork to follow suit after the SCOTUS ruling.
Republicans could pick up as many as 14 seats nationally from the campaign, though several maps face ongoing litigation. As crypto.news reported, the 2026 midterms are being closely watched by the crypto industry as a key test of whether digital asset policy gains in Washington can survive the political cycle.
