Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, both Republicans, called special legislative sessions Friday to rework their states' U.S. House maps, broadening a state-by-state cascade set off by the Supreme Court's April 29 ruling that voided Louisiana's congressional map and tightened the standard for Voting Rights Act challenges.
Ivey's Alabama session begins Monday and will draft a contingency plan for special primaries in case the high court acts quickly enough to let the state shed a court-ordered map that produced the state's second Black representative. Lee announced Tennessee's session late Friday, with Republicans targeting the 9th Congressional District, anchored in Memphis, the lone Democratic-held seat in the state's delegation.
What is scheduled
Louisiana suspended its May 16 congressional primary Thursday at the order of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry. Three lawsuits filed Thursday and Friday seek to restore it, arguing Landry lacked authority and that thousands of absentee ballots have been mailed and returned. District court judges in Baton Rouge denied two requests to block the order late Friday. GOP legislative leaders said they will pass a new map and primary date before their session ends in a month.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves had said earlier he would convene a session 21 days after the high court ruled, putting the start near May 20. That session will redraw state Supreme Court districts a federal judge last year found diluted Black voting power.
Florida moved first. Hours after the ruling, the Republican-led Legislature in Tallahassee passed a new U.S. House map that could deliver the GOP up to four additional seats in November, as JSJ reported Thursday.
The political math
Lawmakers, commissions or courts have adopted new U.S. House districts in eight states over the past year, a cycle that began when President Trump urged Texas Republicans last summer to redraw their map and California Democrats followed suit, according to PBS NewsHour. Republicans hold a narrow majority in the closely divided House.
Alabama's pending Supreme Court appeal argues the court-ordered near-majority-Black district that produced the state's second Black House member is itself an illegal racial gerrymander, the argument that prevailed in Louisiana v. Callais. Tennessee Republicans have in past cycles sought to break Memphis's Democratic vote across surrounding GOP-leaning seats; Voting Rights Act constraints had blocked those efforts.
The counterpoint
Democrats and civil rights groups frame the cascade as the dismantling of a 1965 statute. "We cannot keep doing things like this and calling ourselves a democracy," Tennessee state Sen. Ramesh Akbari said Friday outside the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, sited at the motel where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. CBS News correspondent Nikole Killion described states "rushing to redraw congressional districts" after a ruling that "further weakens the Voting Rights Act of 1965." The Washington Examiner's Brad Polumbo countered in an opinion column that the court "specifically affirmed that the Constitution prohibits intentional racial discrimination," and that any drop in Black House representation will trace to partisan, not racial, line-drawing.
Tennessee's primary is set for Aug. 6, and the candidate qualifying period closed in March. Democrats noted the state Supreme Court in 2022 blocked late redistricting as too close to an election. The U.S. Supreme Court's response to Alabama's emergency motion, filed Thursday, will set the calendar.