The quick and precise killing of a predominately Black congressional district last week brought lawsuits, public protests, a high-profile arrest, and a question: Will affected voters be told about their new districts and polling places?
Lawsuits
While Republicans were still shaking hands on the decision that afternoon, the NAACP Tennessee State Conference had filed a lawsuit to stop it in a Davidson County Chancery Court. At its heart was the argument that state law says you can’t change the voting maps mid-decade, an idea so simple, they said, that “this case is staggeringly easy for this court to decide.”
“It is a direct attack on our democracy and our Constitution to dismantle majority-Black districts,” said Kristen Clarke, NAACP General Counsel. “A democracy without Black representation is not a democracy.”
The ink was barely dry on the Tennessee GOP’s new congressional districts — which dilute Democratic voting blocs in Shelby County — when state Democrats sued to stop them.
On Friday morning, the Tennessee Democratic Party, along with other plaintiffs, filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee challenging the legality of them.
“We are taking this fight everywhere it must be fought, at the polls, in the courts, and in the streets,” Tennessee Democratic Party Chair Rachel Campbell said in a statement Friday. “We are outraged that Governor Bill Lee and Tennessee Republicans are attempting to roll back generations of civil rights progress in just three days through a redistricting scheme designed to unlawfully silence Black voters.
“This is not only racist, it’s reckless. Changing the rules midstream will create chaos for voters and throw communities into upheaval.”
Protests
Protesters from around the state gathered in Nashville throughout the week for acts of civil disobedience.
A live video from state Rep. Justin J. Pearson (D-Memphis) showed protesters, including his brother KeShaun Pearson, being detained and arrested by state troopers for not clearing the gallery at the request of House Speaker Cameron Sexton. KeShaun Pearson was released later that day.
A TikTok video posted by Kulture-Vated showed a number of protesters taunting lawmakers as they exited the Tennessee State Capitol, calling them “Jimmy Neutron looking-ass boy” and “long-neck-ass boy.”
Notified?
A new law passed last week says county election commissions will no longer be mandated to notify affected voters of district changes nor changes to their polling places. However, the GOP did allot funds to commissions to notify voters. So, election commissions no longer have to notify voters of changes, but they have the money if they want to.
The changes were reported by Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government (TCOG). She shared a post with an interesting note.
“Tennessee Elections Coordinator Mark Goins contacted me to say that it was not his intention of [the law], which he helped write, to eliminate statutory requirements to provide voter notice of changes to precinct boundaries,” Fisher said in a blog post. “[Goins] said that the language in [the law] replacing all notice requirements in Title 2 with publishing information on websites may have been ‘too broad.’”