Three Districts for Memphis — Tennessee Republicans Push Through the Mid-Decade Map That Splits Shelby County Three Ways, Erases the State’s Only Remaining Democratic-Held Seat, Lights the Fuse on Louisiana, Alabama and South Carolina, and Forces the Voting Rights Act Question Back Into the Federal Court System Eight Months Before the Midterms
The Tennessee General Assembly on Friday passed the mid-decade congressional map that the Republican leadership has held in caucus drafts since the second week in April, and Memphis — a majority-Black city of 633,000 people that has elected Steve Cohen to the Ninth District for the better part of two decades — will be split into three congressional districts. The Tennessee map is the first of four. Louisiana, Alabama and South Carolina, on the testimony of three Republican state-legislative leaders, are working to a coordinated calendar that intends to deliver new maps in all four states by the end of June. The intent, on the testimony of two House Republican Conference officials, is to lock the House majority before the 2026 midterm cycle has begun.
The Vote
The Tennessee House voted 73 to 26 along party lines at 14:18 Central time. The Tennessee Senate concurred at 16:02. The Republican House Speaker signed the bill at 16:14 and walked off the rostrum without taking the question shouted by the Memphis-based reporter on the second row of the press gallery: whether the Speaker accepted the characterisation of his own caucus’s redistricting counsel that the Shelby County split was “the most aggressive single mid-decade racial gerrymander since the Voting Rights Act.” The Governor, on a written statement issued at 16:22, said he would sign the bill on Monday morning. The signing ceremony, on the testimony of one Tennessee Republican official, will not be open to the press.
The Three-Way Split
The map divides Shelby County, the home of the largest Black population in Tennessee, into the redrawn Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Districts. The redrawn Ninth District, which Mr Cohen has represented since 2007, retains the city core but loses two-thirds of its current population. The redrawn Seventh District, which the Republican incumbent Mark Green held until his February resignation, picks up the suburbs of Germantown and Collierville and runs the new district line through the heart of East Memphis. The redrawn Eighth District, held by the Republican David Kustoff, picks up the southern reaches of Shelby and runs east through Fayette County to Madison. The combined effect of the three new lines, on the testimony of one Republican redistricting counsel briefed on the line-drawing methodology, is that Mr Cohen’s reconfigured Ninth District becomes a marginal Republican seat by an estimated five-point average partisan margin.
The Coordinated Calendar
The Tennessee map is the first of four. The Louisiana legislature, on a special-session call issued by the Governor at 09:30 Central time on Tuesday morning, will take up its own mid-decade map next week, with the Republican leadership working to a single-seat target in the Baton Rouge corridor. The Alabama legislature, on the Republican leadership’s working calendar, will follow in the second week of June, with the Birmingham-Tuscaloosa corridor as the working geography. The South Carolina legislature, on a Republican Conference statement issued at 13:45 on Wednesday, will move in the third week of June. The combined intent of the four-state calendar, on the testimony of one House Republican Conference official, is to deliver four new Republican seats by the end of June and to lock the working House majority for the 2026 cycle before the Democratic National Committee’s mid-summer mapping operation has finished its briefings.
The Voting Rights Act Question
The Tennessee map, on the testimony of three voting-rights litigators briefed on the lines, will be challenged in the Western District of Tennessee on Monday morning. The lawsuit, drafted by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Memphis-based firm of Rikard & Moseley, alleges Section Two violations of the Voting Rights Act and seeks a preliminary injunction by the end of next week. The litigation calendar, on the testimony of one of the three counsel, intends to put the Tennessee map in front of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit by the middle of June and the Supreme Court by the second week of July. The Supreme Court, on the testimony of one constitutional litigator following the docket, has been the working assumption of the Tennessee Republican leadership since the third week of March. The map, on the same testimony, was drawn for the Court that produced Allen versus Milligan and the Court that produced Alexander versus South Carolina — not for the Sixth Circuit and not for the Voting Rights Act.
The Cohen Statement
Representative Steve Cohen, on a written statement issued at 16:48 Central time, called the Shelby County split “a deliberate, calculated, and historically resonant act of voter erasure aimed at the Black voters of Memphis.” He committed, in the same statement, to running in the redrawn Ninth District. He named, in the closing line of the statement, the four colleagues — the Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina and the Texas delegations — whose seats he expects to lose to coordinated mid-decade Republican mapdrawing in the working calendar that closes in June. The statement, on the testimony of one Cohen aide, was drafted on Wednesday and held for the Senate concurrence vote.
The Roberts Court
The Roberts Court is now the working venue for the constitutional question of mid-decade racial gerrymandering, and the Chief Justice has used two of the three public statements he has issued this term to lament — in his own carefully measured language — the public perception of the Court as a venue of political outcome. The four-state Southern map calendar is the most consequential single test of the Roberts characterisation since the Court’s 2023 ruling on the Alabama lines. What Friday has decided is that the test is now scheduled. What June will decide is whether the Court accepts the four-state calendar or rejects it.
What the Map Decides
What the Tennessee map has decided is that one Democratic seat is gone, that three more are queued up for June, and that the Roberts Court will hear the question before the August recess. What the map has not decided is whether the four-state calendar holds, whether the Sixth Circuit takes the lawsuit on the litigators’ calendar or on its own, and whether the Court that produced Milligan two terms ago is the same Court that hears the Tennessee map this summer. The single fact that is now decided, on the evidence of the Friday vote, is that the working majority that produced Executive Order 14211 in the Rose Garden yesterday morning intends to be a working majority on January 3, 2027, regardless of the November result.