Tennessee has been trying to eliminate its only majority-Black congressional district. The NAACP is now taking that fight to federal court.
On May 13, the NAACP, alongside the NAACP Tennessee State Conference and a coalition of civil rights and community organizations, filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee challenging the state’s newly enacted congressional map as racially discriminatory and unconstitutional.
The lawsuit targets Tennessee’s redrawing of Congressional District 9, a district anchored in Memphis for more than 50 years and the only district in the state where Black voters have held a meaningful majority. Under the new map, that district has been cracked apart and spread across multiple districts that extend deep into predominantly white, rural areas.
The NAACP argues this was done deliberately, with the explicit intent of eliminating Black voting power and denying Memphis’s Black community the ability to elect a candidate of their choice.
The federal filing follows an ongoing state court lawsuit the NAACP filed earlier this month challenging the same map under the Tennessee Constitution. The organization is now pursuing the fight on two fronts simultaneously, state and federal, arguing that the redistricting plan violates the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Plaintiffs are seeking immediate relief, including a court order preventing the state from conducting elections under the new map and requiring a return to the district lines adopted at the start of the decade.
The new congressional map was rushed through the Tennessee state legislature in approximately 48 hours, according to the NAACP’s complaint, with minimal transparency and no meaningful public input. The NAACP argues that lawmakers ignored traditional redistricting principles such as compactness and respect for communities of interest, instead drawing lines specifically designed to dilute Black voting power.
Clear warnings that the map would undermine Black political representation were raised and ignored during the legislative process.
Memphis and Shelby County ,home to the state’s largest concentration of Black voters and the largest majority-Black city in the country, were divided into three separate congressional districts under the new map, each extending far into predominantly white, rural territory.
The effect, the lawsuit argues, is both intentional and unconstitutional: a majority-Black community in the heart of Tennessee’s most significant city split up and diluted so that its collective political voice disappears.
“We are at the dawn of a new Jim Crow era,” said Derrick Johnson, President and CEO of the NAACP. “People fought and died for the representation that lawmakers across the South are so casually eroding. The NAACP will not stand by while elected officials manipulate district lines to take away our political power and silence our voices.”
The NAACP’s lawsuit is explicit about what Memphis means in the context of this fight. It is the largest majority-Black city in the country. It is where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, where the Civil Rights Movement made some of its most consequential and costly stands, and where generations of Black Tennesseans built political power through decades of organizing, voting, and community investment.
Congressional District 9 was the institutional expression of that power. Tennessee’s new map dismantles it.
“This is not just about lines on a map, it is about whether Black voters will have a fair and equal voice in our electoral system,” said Kristen Clarke, General Counsel of the NAACP. “Memphis is home to the largest majority Black city in the country; it is the place where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, and it is a community that deserves to have a voice in our democracy.”
The fight is now in two courtrooms simultaneously. The NAACP says it will also mount a mobilization campaign to turn out voters in support of leaders who will respect their voices. The courts will have their say. So will the people.
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