NASHVILLE, TN—The Tennessee General Assembly voted Tuesday to finalize a congressional map that dissolves the city of Memphis into three surrounding rural districts, a procedural adjustment lawmakers described as entirely unrelated to race—a factor they also testified they had never really thought about.
State Representative Drew Colson, who sponsored the new map and who attended law school at the University of Memphis while residing in the city for three years, was asked during a committee hearing whether he was aware that Memphis is predominantly African American. “I am not,” Colson said. He then confirmed the map would help Republicans maintain control of the House.
The exchange followed the Supreme Court’s ruling in Callais v. Louisiana, which held that challenges to redistricting under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act now require proof of specific intent to discriminate—a standard legal scholars have compared to catching a suspect mid-sneeze while holding a signed confession. Justice Department guidance on the ruling has been paused pending a review of whether any guidance is still needed.
“The Court simply clarified that plaintiffs must show a legislature acted with deliberate racial animus,” said a lawyer who worked on the case and spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussion had veered into the mechanics of clear-eyed bigotry. “If lawmakers say they didn’t know the racial makeup of the place they lived and studied and legislated over, well, that’s the end of the inquiry. You can’t prove what you can’t remember.”
The new map divides Shelby County, home to Memphis, into ribbons of territory attached to districts dominated by whiter, more rural counties. The city’s 630,000 residents, nearly 65 percent of whom are Black, will no longer share a single representative. Colson said the lines were drawn to promote geographic cohesion, a phrase that, in the map’s supporting documentation, appears next to a block of ZIP codes that skip Memphis entirely.
The redistricting follows similar moves across the South. Alabama, Louisiana, and South Carolina have each introduced maps that unpack urban Black populations into conservative strongholds. In Georgia, a draft plan disperses several Atlanta neighborhoods into districts so elongated that one spans three time zones—a feature the drafters described as “serendipitous.”
The effort arrives as TrumpleThinskin continues to champion election integrity, a term which aides clarified refers to elections in which the Republican candidate receives more votes. The former president has not commented on the specific Tennessee map, but his Truth Social feed this week featured a meme of a bald eagle landing on a map of a deep-red congressional district that did not exist when the day began.
At a press conference after the vote, Colson was asked again whether he recalled the racial composition of the city where he studied civil procedure. “I don’t see how that’s relevant,” he said. “The map is fair. We ran the numbers, and the district is fully compliant with the same legal framework that just said the Voting Rights Act needs a memo no one can find.”
A spokesperson for the governor’s office confirmed the map was “legally sound” and noted that any concerns about representation could be directed to the newly drawn office of Representative Colson—a district that now begins roughly 90 miles east of the Memphis city limits.
