ACLU sues to block Tennessee’s redrawn congressional map that divides Memphis

The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Tennessee filed a federal lawsuit Monday seeking to block the state’s novel congressional district map, citing intentional racial discrimination and First Amendment retaliation against black voters.

This is the third lawsuit challenging a redrawn map that eliminated the state’s only Democratic-majority, Black-majority House district. The Tennessee NAACP conference is Thursday defendant in state court. The Tennessee Democratic Party, four Democratic congressional candidates and four voters are working together to end the apply of the map in the 2026 elections. a separate federal case.

The ACLU lawsuit seeks to prevent the map from going into effect before the August primary election.

“Black voters in Memphis did exactly what the Constitution empowers every American to do and elect their representative,” ACLU of Tennessee Executive Director Miriam Nemeth said in a press release. “The legislature’s response was to try to ensure that these votes would never again carry the same weight. The law has a name for it and it is not redistricting, but it is textbook First Amendment retaliation. It is, in fact, racism.”

The ACLU filed the lawsuit on behalf of three Memphis voters, the Black Clergy Collaborative of Memphis, the Memphis A. Philip Randolph Institute and Equity Alliance.

Governor Bill Lee called a special legislative session to draw novel U.S. House districts at the direction of President Donald Trump after: a recent ruling by the United States Supreme Court weakened part of the Electoral Act. Members of the Republican majority in the state legislature repealed a long-standing Tennessee law that prohibited redistricting in mid-decade, passed the novel map and approved novel rules for the upcoming 2026 elections within three days.

Sen. John Stevens, a Huntington Republican and state Senate sponsor of the novel map, has repeatedly said the districts were drawn to “maximize partisan advantage.”

Secretary of State Tre Hargett, elections coordinator Mark Goins and members of the Tennessee Board of Elections were named as defendants. Hargett’s office, which houses the Division of Elections, declined to comment on the pending litigation.

The ACLU lawsuit says the process was “unprecedented and suspicious,” noting that this is the first time in up-to-date history that the Tennessee General Assembly has made a mid-decade redistricting. The map’s sponsors refused to answer “even basic questions about their own legislation or Tennessee’s demographics, such as who drew the map, what data was used and whether Memphis was majority black,” the lawsuit states.

Before the Senate’s final vote on the map, Sen. London Lamar, a Democrat from Memphis, asked Stevens, who attended law school at the University of Memphis, whether he realized that Memphis’ population was predominantly black.

“I’m not,” he said.

The lawsuit argues that the redistricting process is part of a pattern in the Tennessee Legislature in which a “discriminatory motive” has been prominent in recent history.

The filing points to the 2017 removal of $250,000 earmarked for Memphis’ bicentennial celebration after the city bypassed the Tennessee Heritage Preservation Act by selling two parks so Confederate monuments could be removed, the 2023 expulsion of two Black lawmakers, a 2026 bill authorizing the takeover of Memphis-Shelby County Schools, and another 2026 bill allowing the state to be a prosecutor General to, among other things, request an audit of the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office and seek to replace the county’s elected District Attorney.

“Repeated recent efforts by the White-dominated political faction controlling the General Assembly to target the majority-Black city of Memphis and deprive Memphis of the ability to elect its own officials and set local policies that leaders of the White-dominated political faction have pushed based on anti-Black stereotypes,” the lawsuit says.

The plaintiffs seek declaratory judgment that the May 2026 congressional map was adopted “for discriminatory purposes in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments” and “unlawful retaliation in violation of the First Amendment.” The lawsuit says the 2022 congressional map should remain in effect through the 2026 elections.

ACLU Lawsuit May 11, 2026