A three-judge panel has dismissed a federal lawsuit challenging Tennessee’s new congressional map, after allowing the maps to move forward for the August primary elections.
The ruling brings to a close a monthslong legal effort to challenge Republican redistricting efforts in Tennessee based on allegations of racial discrimination.
After Republican lawmakers held a special legislative session and redrew Tennessee’s congressional district maps in May at the request of President Donald Trump, plaintiffs from Memphis sued the state alleging that the new maps were designed to dilute the votes of Black people.
In July, Circuit Court Judge John Nalbandian, Chief District Judge William Campbell and District Judge Greg Stivers allowed maps to move forward
for the 2026 election cycle, finding that the plaintiffs were unlikely to be successful in the case.
In the final ruling, filed on Oct. 1, the panel found that plaintiffs’ attorneys failed to show that voters’ power was diluted specifically on race.
“When a map’s effects are ‘readily explainable on grounds apart from race … disproportionate impact alone cannot be decisive,’” the panel writes. “Here, political motivations explain the map’s effects.”
The panel ruled that the presumption that lawmakers acted “in good faith” outweighed plaintiffs’ allegations that the map was drawn deliberately to dilute Black voting power.
“Plaintiffs stress that they don’t need to ‘establish widespread racial hatred, or … show that partisan motivations were a sham or a pretext’ to prevail — just that ‘racial discrimination … was one of [the legislature’s] motivating factors’ in passing the map,” the court wrote. “Fair enough, but Plaintiffs haven’t met that standard.”
In a separate analysis, data scientists at the University of Chicago determined after running tens of millions of simulations that race, not politics, was the only explanation to produce Tennessee's new ongressional map.
Tennessee was one of the first states to move to redraw congressional maps after the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision, which rolled back most protections in Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The new map divides Memphis, a majority minority district and historically Democratic stronghold.
Areas in Shelby County that were in the old District 9 are now split between the 5th Congressional District and 9th Congressional district — which have become the two most competitive congressional races in Tennessee this cycle.
Vivian Jones covers state government and politics for The Tennessean. Reach her at vjones@tennessean.com.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Federal court upholds TN GOP’s new congressional maps
