The fight over Tennessee’s new congressional map has moved from the Capitol to the courthouse.
Within hours of Gov. Bill Lee signing a Republican-backed redistricting package into law, two lawsuits were filed challenging the state’s move to redraw most of Tennessee’s congressional districts in the middle of an election year — including the Memphis-centered 9th District, long the state’s only majority-Black congressional district.
The legal challenges follow a raucous special session in which Republican lawmakers repealed Tennessee’s long-standing ban on mid-decade congressional redistricting, reopened candidate qualifying until May 15 and adopted a new map that splits Shelby County among three congressional districts.
Together, the lawsuits reflect the same two-track argument opponents made throughout the special session: first, that the Legislature had no legal authority to do what it did; and second, that even if it did, the state is changing too much, too late.
NAACP: Redistricting was unlawful
The Tennessee State Conference of the NAACP and its president, Gloria Sweet-Love, filed an emergency petition in Davidson County Chancery Court seeking declaratory judgment and injunctive relief. The petition names the governor and the General Assembly as respondents and argues that the state engaged in “unlawful late-decade congressional redistricting” in violation of Tennessee law and the Tennessee Constitution.
At the center of the NAACP petition is Tennessee Code Annotated Section 2-16-102, which, until lawmakers repealed it during the special session, stated that congressional districts “may not be changed between apportionments.”
The NAACP argues that because Tennessee’s congressional districts were already redrawn after the 2020 census, lawmakers were barred from changing them again in 2026.
The petition also argues that Lee’s proclamation calling the special session did not specifically authorize lawmakers to repeal that ban or suspend residency requirements for congressional candidates.
Under Article III, Section 9 of the Tennessee Constitution, when the governor calls lawmakers into extraordinary session, the proclamation must state the specific purposes for which they are convened, and lawmakers “shall enter on no legislative business except that for which they were specifically called together.”
The NAACP contends the proclamation mentioned the composition of congressional districts and statutory changes needed to effectuate new maps, but did not specifically mention repealing Section 2-16-102 or suspending the one-year residency requirement for candidates.
“The districts may not be changed between apportionments,” the lawsuit quotes from the former statute.
The petition asks the court to declare that the repeal of the mid-decade redistricting ban is void, that the suspension of residency requirements is void and that any redistricting arising from the special session is also void.
In plain terms, the NAACP is asking the court to stop the state from using the new map.
TN Dems: Too much confusion, chaos with elections underway
A separate federal lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee by voters, Democratic candidates and the Tennessee Democratic Party.
Plaintiffs include voters Vicki Hale, Earle Fisher, Telise Turner and Hedy Weinberg; candidates U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, Columbia Mayor Chaz Molder, Chaney Mosley and state Rep. Justin J. Pearson; and the Tennessee Democratic Party.
That lawsuit names Lee, Secretary of State Tre Hargett and Tennessee Coordinator of Elections Mark Goins as defendants in their official capacities.
Unlike the NAACP lawsuit, the federal complaint says it is not directly challenging the apportionment decisions themselves. Instead, it asks the court to block implementation and enforcement of the new laws for the 2026 election cycle, arguing that the rushed changes burden voters’ constitutional rights to vote and candidates’ and voters’ rights to political speech and association.
The federal lawsuit focuses heavily on timing.
Before the new law, the candidate qualifying deadline for the August congressional primary was March 10. The redistricting package moved that deadline to May 15. It also changed withdrawal deadlines, created a “special qualifying period,” suspended the residency requirement for 2026 congressional candidates and altered notice requirements for voters.
The lawsuit argues that the new timeline creates the very election chaos state officials previously warned against.
In 2022, when litigation challenged Tennessee legislative districts, Lee, Hargett and Goins opposed moving election deadlines deeper into the calendar. In that case, known as Wygant v. Lee, state officials argued that “changing the rules on the eve of an election would wreak chaos upon the electoral process” and risk voter confusion and disenfranchisement, including for military and overseas voters.
The federal complaint notes that those arguments were made more than six weeks earlier in the election calendar than the May 7 enactment of the new congressional redistricting package.
The lawsuit also points to sworn affidavits from election officials in 2022, including Shelby County Administrator of Elections Linda Phillips, who warned that moving qualifying deadlines later could prevent election offices from meeting federal deadlines for mailing ballots to military and overseas voters.
According to the federal complaint, those same election concerns apply now — but with even less time.
The plaintiffs argue that election officials must now deal with new district lines, revised candidate deadlines, voter assignments, ballot styles, notices, ballot preparation, voting machine programming and overseas ballot requirements before the Aug. 6 primary.
The federal lawsuit asks for temporary and permanent injunctions preventing the state from implementing the new map and election changes during the 2026 cycle.
Strategic opposition
For opponents of the map, the lawsuits are the next phase of a fight they began building even before final votes were cast.
During committee hearings and floor debate, Memphis lawmakers repeatedly pressed Republican leaders on why the map was being redrawn now, whether race was considered, how election officials could implement changes in time, and whether lawmakers were creating the same kind of confusion the state had warned against in earlier litigation.
Republican leaders defended the map as legal and said it was drawn using population and politics, not racial data. They also argued that lawmakers were acting within their authority after Lee called the special session.
But with the filings now in state and federal court, the question shifts from whether Republicans had the votes to pass the plan to whether the courts will allow it to stand.
For Memphis, the stakes remain the same: whether the state can carve the city’s political voice into three congressional districts before voters head to the polls this summer.
