CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATIONS

On May 8, 2026, the Tennessee General Assembly enacted a law to dilute the collective voting power of the black residents of Tennessee’s Ninth Congressional District. The legislature did so by dividing the District up and then redistributing its divided population into three separate Congressional Districts, each one lying far beyond the Ninth District’s original borders. The problem with that is the fact that before the legislation was enacted, the population of the Ninth Congressional District  included a voting majority of black people who usually got to decide who the District’s Representative in the United States Congress would be.

The Fifteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits that kind of legislation. It reads as follows:  

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

U.S. Const., Amendment 15

Of course, the proponents and sponsors of that legislation denied that they enacted it “on account of race [or] color.” But the following circumstances of that legislation’s enactment belies their denial. First, the legislation was entirely drawn up, debated, and enacted over the course of three consecutive days in May of 2026, not leaving time or opportunity for legislative hearings on the effect the proposed legislation would have on the voting power of the black population living in the Ninth Congressional District. Second, the Ninth Congressional District largely consisted of   the City of Memphis, Tennessee and of Shelby County, Tennessee surrounding the City’s borders. As so configured, the District had never been “gerrymandered,” at least not until the May 8, 2026, legislation came along. Third, the City of Memphis and the County of Shelby were densely populated urban areas with governmental needs and interests far different from those of the three, largely rural Congressional Districts into which they were transferred by the May 8,2026 legislation. Fourth, the Ninth Congressional District targeted by the May 8, 2026, legislation was the only black majority Congressional District in Tennessee. After the legislation was passed by the legislature and signed by the Governor, no such Districts were left in Tennessee. And fifth, no data from the Constitutionally mandated 2020 federal Census of either Tennessee or the Ninth Congressional District required or justified any reapportionment of the population living in those areas.

All of these circumstances are combined, they strongly imply “racial discrimination” on the part of the Tennessee General Assembly, in violation of both Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act, and the 15^th Amendment to the United States Constitution. The legislature clearly and recklessly disregarded the effect of its legislation on the collective voting power of the black majority population in Memphis and Shelby County. In the Supreme Court’s recent case of Louisiana v. Callais, U.S. Sup.Ct. Slip Op. of April 29, 2026, that is sufficient to prove a violation of Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act, and through that, a direct violation of the 15^th Amendment to the United States Constitution.[1]  The Tennessee legislation of May 8, 2026 should accordingly be declared “void” by the courts as a “law repugnant to the constitution.” Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 180 (1803).

/s/ Dan D. Rhea

[1] See page 35 of Slip Opinion, immediately under Part V of the majority opinion of the Court.