Legal Challenges Begin as Tennessee Redraws Sole Democratic District

Tennessee’s NAACP chapter sued and others vowed legal fights after Republicans split a Memphis US House district into 3 parts in a whirlwind special session.

State Rep. Justin J. Pearson (D-Memphis) speaks during a rally after a special session of the state Legislature to redraw U.S. congressional voting maps in Nashville, Tenn., on May 7, 2026. AP Photo/George Walker IV

Tennessee’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed suit, and others hinted at further legal challenges, on May 7 over Tennessee’s newly enacted congressional map, which redraws Memphis into three districts and ends what had been the state’s only majority-black and its only Democratic-held congressional seat.

U.S. Rep Steve Cohen, the lone Democrat in Tennessee’s congressional delegation, also alluded to his own forthcoming legal challenges after the map passed, saying in a post on X that the “next stop” in Democratic pushback is in “the courts.”