Judges dismiss suit alleging Tennessee's political maps discriminate against communities of color

A federal judicial panel has dismissed a lawsuit alleging that Tennessee’s U.S. House maps and those for the state Senate amount to unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. The complaint was the first court challenge over a 2022 congressional redistricting map that carved up Democratic-leaning Nashville to help Republicans flip a seat in last year’s elections. Critics say the change was done to dilute the power of Black voters and other communities of color in one of the state’s few Democratic strongholds. However, the panel of three federal judges argued there was another clear motivation behind Tennessee’s Republican supermajority by pointing to “naked partisanship” as the likely “straightforward explanation.”