A panel of federal judges dismissed a federal lawsuit filed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and others against the State of Tennessee and Gov. Bill Lee.
Tennessee State Conference of the NAACP, et.al. v. William B. Lee was filed by a “coalition of civil rights organizations and Tennessee voters filed a federal lawsuit against Tennessee’s Governor, Secretary of State, Coordinator of Elections, and the State Election Commission and its members challenging the state’s enacted congressional and state Senate districts as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders and as intentionally racially discriminatory,” according to a case summary.
“They sought a judicial declaration the plans were unconstitutional, a permanent injunction barring the plans from use in future elections, and for the court to require new, lawful congressional and state Senate plans be implemented,” the summary said.
The complaint, filed on August 8, accused Lee and the Tennessee General Assembly of intentionally redrawing state congressional and senatorial districts to disenfranchise black voters.
“Representative Vincent Dixie, a Black Representative, spoke out against the Congressional Plan—explaining that the majority-sponsored plan would dilute the voting power of Black voters of Davidson County, effectively disenfranchising them,” the complaint said. “G.A. Hardaway and Harold M. Love, Jr., both Black Representatives, also spoke out against the majority-sponsored plan, stating that the map would diminish the opportunities for Black voters in Tennessee, and specifically in Davidson and Shelby Counties, to elect their candidates of choice.”
In an attempt to suggest that the defendants were racists, the complaint even mentions the expulsion of the “Tennessee Three,” including black State Representatives Justin Jones (D-Nashville) and Justin Pearson (D-Memphis), after the pair, along with white State Representative Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville), the three of whom we responsible for a riot at the Tennessee Capitol while demanding gun control in the wake of the Covenant School shooting.
The three-judge panel was appointed a week later, and after a year of procedural measures, the state’s motion to dismiss was decided upon Thursday.
“We grant the motion to dismiss Governor Lee on sovereign-immunity grounds,” said an order from District Judge Eli Richardson, Circuit Court Judge Eric Murphy and Circuit Court Judge Alex Pearson. “And we grant the motion to dismiss the Complaint for failing to state plausible claims of racial gerrymandering and vote dilution.”
The decision determined that the plaintiffs lacked evidence that the alleged gerrymandering was racially motivated, though the court recognized that it may have been politically motivated.
“A racial gerrymandering claim requires plaintiffs to show that the legislature relied primarily on race when drawing the maps—no matter the reason for doing so,” the order said. “A vote dilution claim, by contrast, requires plaintiffs to show that the legislature relied on race for an invidious reason: to harm a racial group’s ability to elect the group’s preferred candidates. And plaintiffs cannot prove this invidious reason merely by showing that the legislature knew that the revised map would have such harmful effects on the racial group.”
The court left the door open for an appeal.
“We thus should give [the plaintiffs] a chance to amend since ‘a more carefully drafted complaint might state a claim,'” the order says, adding that they have 30 days from the date of the order to file an appeal.
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Peter D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Peter on Twitter/X.
