NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — As Texas lawmakers battle over new congressional lines, a similar redistricting fight has been unfolding in Tennessee.
Texas Democrats have until Friday to return to the state after fleeing in protest over Republicans’ attempts to redraw congressional maps after just two years to add five new Republican districts. The issue gained national attention.
However, these issues aren’t unique to the Lone Star State. Tennessee faced lawsuits over its congressional, House, and Senate district maps in 2022.
Voters sued the state, accusing the Republican supermajority of partisan gerrymandering by unnecessarily dividing counties on the state House map, and numbering districts out of order on the Senate map, which is against the TN Constitution.
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While a federal judge dropped the lawsuit over the House map, a three-judge panel ordered the Senate to redraw its map, before the TN Supreme Court intervened and paused the order. The Court heard arguments in Oct. 2024 and has yet to issue a ruling.
However, Sen. Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville) told News 2 that while redistricting to benefit a certain political party is legal according to the U.S. Supreme Court, it hurts the voters.
“When the only thing that matters to legislatures is drawing lines and squeezing out as many Republican or Democratic seats as possible, that’s the surest way to make sure that nobody is really represented,” Sen. Yarbro said. “The primary issue is that it’s a partisan motivation. It’s just, forget the rules, forget what matters from a fairness standpoint, how do we max out the number of red seats versus blue seats? That can happen in states on either side of the political aisle, but the ultimate loser is the voters.”
A lawsuit over TN’s 2022 congressional maps, which accused the state of racial gerrymandering, was dropped, but Yarbro said the issue over the state Senate map and the situation in TX are still connected.
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“What we’re supposed to do in a democracy is recognize that there area lot of people who don’t agree with us, but recognize that they deserve a voice in the system, and what unites the litigations going on here, the mess that’s going on in Texas, and the mess that’s going on all over the country, is that you’re not seeing a focus on making sure people are fairly represented, you’re seeing people trying to max out the power of their political party, and that’s a losing proposition,” Sen. Yarbro said.
News 2 reached out to a spokesperson for Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, who is the Speaker of the Senate, and the TN Attorney General’s Office for comment, but had not heard back by the time this article was published.
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