Federal Court Upholds Tennessee’s New Congressional Map

The Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville on March 29, 2023. Chase Smith/The Epoch Times

Tennessee does not have to redraw its new congressional map because groups that sued, alleging lawmakers illegally considered race, did not disprove alternative explanations, a federal court has ruled.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other groups that sued Tennessee said in their complaint that state legislators redrew the map in a way that distributed minority voters across several districts, diluting their power.

“The complaint alleges that minority voters prefer Democratic candidates. It also alleges that the changes (by a Republican-controlled Legislature) flipped a congressional seat long held by a Democratic representative and shored up a state senate seat that a Republican senator barely won in a recent election. In light of this partisanship explanation for the changes, the complaint fails to allege ’more than the mere possibility' of racial discrimination,” three federal judges said in the new ruling.

The judges said they were following the U.S. Supreme Court precedent established in May, when justices upheld South Carolina’s map and said that people who sue over redrawn boundaries “must rule out the possibility that politics drove the districting process.“ There’s also a ”presumption of legislative good faith,” justices said.

The Supreme Court ruling was made in a case known as Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP.

The complaint against Tennessee was filed before that ruling.

The federal judges said they would dismiss the complaint without prejudice, enabling the NAACP and other parties to file an updated complaint.

“The challengers may be able to allege facts that plausibly ‘disentangle race from politics’ now that they know our view of the law after Alexander,” they said. “We thus should give them a chance to amend since ’a more carefully drafted complaint might state a claim.'”

Mitchell D. Brown, a lawyer representing the NAACP and other groups, told The Epoch Times in an email that his clients “are in the midst of talking with their lawyers about potential next steps.”

A lawyer for the state did not respond to a request for comment.

U.S. Circuit Judge Eric Murphy, U.S. District Judge Eli Richardson, and U.S. District Judge Benita Pearson decided on the case.

They were appointed to a panel by Jeffrey Sutton, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, because the case involves redistricting.

The judges separately granted a motion to dismiss Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee as a defendant, finding that he enjoys sovereign immunity and the plaintiffs presented no evidence to support claims that he has authority to carry out elections.

Tennessee law actually names a chief administrative election officer who is not the governor and who is appointed by Tennessee’s secretary of state. The secretary of state in turn is appointed by the legislature, not the governor.