Tennessee Republicans to Consider Redrawing US House District Covering Majority-Black Memphis
Tennessee is the latest state to jump on the redistricting bandwagon, with a special legislative session beginning today, a day after a similar session kicked off in Alabama. In Louisiana, lawmakers are also making plans for new US House districts after the US Supreme Court last week struck down the state’s current map. Florida signed a new gerrymandered congressional district map into law yesterday that gives Republicans an electoral advantage in four additional races in November’s midterm elections.
Last week’s high court ruling said Louisiana relied too heavily on race when creating a second black-majority House district as it attempted to comply with the Voting Rights Act. The ruling severely weakened a key pillar of that law and has given Republicans in various states grounds to try to eliminate majority-black districts that tend to elect Democrats, potentially reversing decades of gains in minority voting rights.
Republican Governor Bill Lee called Tennessee lawmakers into a special session to consider a plan that could break up the state’s lone Democratic-held US House district, centred on the majority-black city of Memphis. The move comes after pressure from Donald Trump to get more states to join in redistricting as the GOP seeks to hold on to its narrow House majority in November.
The candidate qualifying period in Tennessee ended in March, and the primary election is scheduled for 6 August. Clergy members concerned about plans to split Memphis’ congressional district denounced the move yesterday. “This latest attempt at redistricting is not just about lines on a map. It is about misrepresentation,” the Reverend Earle Fisher, a pastor at the Abyssinian Missionary Baptist Church and the founder of Up the Vote 901, referring to the Memphis area code, told the Associated Press. “It’s about whether the voices of black people in this state will be heard or hidden.”
