U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN-09) released a statement smearing the nation’s highest court as “Donald Trump’s Jim Crow Supreme Court” following Wednesday’s ruling in a high stakes case that has opened the door to redrawing Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District.
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in the case Louisiana v. Callais that Louisiana’s revised congressional map, which was designed to create a second majority-Black district, constituted an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito emphasized that race-based districting must meet a very high constitutional bar, which essentially narrows how the Voting Rights Act can be applied when drawing congressional districts.
Amid Wednesday’s ruling, President Donald Trump has since announced that he has spoken with Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, confirming that the governor will “work hard” to redraw the state’s 9th Congressional District.
Immediately after the Court released the decision, Cohen released an initial statement saying he was “disappointed,” further arguing that “the Court has diluted the Voting Rights Act which guaranteed minority voters the right to elect the representative of their choosing.”
At the time, Cohen also cautioned that if Tennessee lawmakers moved to redraw the district, he would pursue “every option, legal and political,” to oppose such efforts.
However, after Trump publicly stated he had spoken with the governor and encouraged redistricting, Cohen escalated his tone against the Court.
In a follow-up statement, Cohen accused Republicans of attempting to strip political power from Black voters and went further, characterizing the Court as a “Jim Crow” court and branding Wednesday’s ruling as “the greatest setback to civil rights since Plessy v. Ferguson in the Jim Crow era.”
Enforced in the South for decades, Jim Crow laws were enacted during a period when Southern state governments, largely controlled by Democrats at the time, imposed racial segregation and restrictions on voting rights.
In contrast to Cohen’s characterization of the ruling, members of the Court’s majority framed the decision as a step away from race-based districting. In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that prior interpretations of the Voting Rights Act had pushed courts and legislatures toward dividing voters along racial lines.
Thomas wrote that those interpretations effectively created “an entitlement to roughly proportional representation” for racial groups and led to districts being drawn primarily based on race. He described that approach as inconsistent with what he called the Constitution’s commitment to a “color-blind” legal framework.
Thomas further argued that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act should not apply to redistricting at all, maintaining that the law is focused on access to voting – such as ballot access and counting procedures – rather than how district lines are drawn.
Aside from Cohen, Tennessee State Rep. Justin Pearson (D-Memphis), who is currently a candidate in the Democratic primary for the 9th Congressional District, called the Court’s ruling a “racist attack and assault on our democracy.”
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X.
Photo “Rep. Steve Cohen” by Rep. Steve Cohen.
So typical Cohen’s comment which is straight from the DNC playbook. He throws around Jim Crow laws, same thing as demented Joe Biden claimed. Neither know what Jim Crow laws entail. If they did, they would realize it their actions, their demands, their comments that try suppress the black vote.
This clown is toast.
One of two things will happen-
1. He will be redistricted out or
2. His own party will primary him out (with Dashiki Boy)
Psst – you ain’t Black Steve. Maybe a Black Republican can represent Memphis better than you.
U. S. Rep. Steve Cohen of Memphis is a dyed-in-the-wool democrat. Cohen is just about as radical and extreme in his political views as a leftist democrat can be (in my opinion). But Cohen is also a gifted intellectual. In other words, Cohen is no ‘dummy’. Now, don’t ask me to explain this incongruity. I just note the fact that the two concepts apparently can both be true at one and the same time in the same person. Cohen is indeed a paradox.
So, Cohen thinks that the Supreme Court of the United States ‘got it wrong’ in the Louisiana v. Callais case that the Court decided last week? Sounds to me that Cohen is just like the people who were complaining in 1954 when the Supreme Court issued its Brown v. Board of Education decision that overturned the Court’s 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. The Supreme Court is always allowed ‘to be smarter’ today than it was yesterday.
In the Louisiana v. Callais case the Supreme Court held that the U. S. Constitution clearly states that one cannot discriminate on the basis of race. (Nothing here for legal scholars to argue about. This is pretty standard ‘stuff’.) But apparently Cohen then thinks that to correct alleged unconstitutional discrimination on the basis of race, A FEDERAL COURT SHOULD DISCRIMINATE ON THE BASIS OF RACE?
Strange how some of the simplest ideas can become the trickiest of traps for some of the supposedly smartest people. IMO it is time for Cohen to be replaced as a member of the U. S. House of Representatives.
Cohen? Chicken Cohen? Replacement needed.