CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATIONS

Operating on the theory that the recent Supreme Court case of Louisiana v Callais (decided April 29, 2026) gives a free pass to state legislatures to engage in partisan “gerrymandering” of Congressional districts regardless of any other laws that govern Congressional district-making, the Tennessee legislature enacted a Congressional map splitting the black majority voting population of Shelby County Tennessee into three separate Congressional districts. The three new districts were extensively “gerrymandered,” encompassing vast rural areas and suburban Nashville areas as much as two hundred miles away from Shelby County, itself centered on the City of Memphis. The legislature’s purpose in dividing Shelby County up into three separate Congressional District., as that body openly proclaimed, was “political” in nature. The Republican-dominated legislature wanted to arrange the defeat of the Democratic Party incumbent for Tennessee’s original Ninth Congressional District, which had also been centered around Memphis and Shelby County. The original Ninth District contained a majority of voters who were aligned with the Democratic Party, and they had elected and re-elected the Democratic incumbent for that District for five two-year terms in Congress. After the legislature’s redistricting enactment, those voters found themselves re-aligned with the minority party, i.e., the Democrats, in each of the three newly formed districts. Their Democratic incumbent was thereby assured of losing re-election in the 2026 Congressional elections. The legislature openly refused to deal with the widely known fact that the Democratic Party loyalties of most Shelby Countians were tied to the dark color of their skin.

The Tennessee legislature’s redistricting enactment clearly violated the 15^th Amendment to the United States Constitution. That Amendment 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 XV, Section 1.

By its express terms, the Amendment prohibits the dilution, i.e., the “abridgement” of the majority voting power of the black American citizens living in and around Memphis, Tennessee. That interpretation is solidified by Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 52 U.S.C. §10301(b), which is specifically designed to enforce the terms of the 15^th Amendment.

To be sure, the Supreme Court’s majority Opinion in Louisiana v Callais, Sup.Ct. Slip Opinion of April 29, 2026, contains some passages that do suggest a free pass for “partisan gerrymandering.” However, that Opinion also contains an unambiguous explanatory passage that sets out the proof necessary to win a black majority “dilution” claim in court under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and through that, under the 15^th Amendment itself. See The Callais Case, supra, Slip Opinion page 35. The legal reality here is that The Callais Case dealt with facts that were substantially different from what the Tennessee legislature did.[1]

The Tennessee legislature’s redistricting law enacted after The Callais Case easily met all of the Supreme Court’s requirements for showing a violation of the 15^th Amendment. The legislature split a civil district, Tennessee’s former Ninth Congressional District, naturally dominated by black voters for at least a decade,  into three extensively gerrymandered Congressional Districts, with the sole intention of ridding the federal Congress of Tennessee’s only Democratic Congressman. Nothing in the most recent federal Census for the year 2020 justified any redistricting at all of Tennessee’s Congressional Districts in 2026. The Tennessee legislature just did not like the choice of Congressional Representative previously made by the black citizens of Memphis, Shelby County, or the surrounding Ninth Congressional District over the previous ten years. The old Ninth District was the only majority black Congressional District left in Tennessee in 2026. All of that, and more, raises an objective inference of animosity against Shelby County’s black citizens on the part of the Tennessee legislature’s Republican Party members. Any subjective claim of “good faith” by those legislators rings hollow, at best.

In the words of the 15^th Amendment, the Tennessee legislature “abridged” “the right of citizens of the United States to vote” “on account of [their] race, color, or [the] previous condition of servitude [of many of their ancestors].” The Courts of the United States, and even the presently constituted Supreme Court of the United States that issued The Callais Case, should declare the Tennessee redistricting legislation of 2026 “repugnant to the constitution” and therefore “void.” Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 180 (1804).

/s/ Dan D. Rhea

[1] In The Callais Case, the Court struck down a statute that created a racially based “gerrymander” the Court held to have violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14^th Amendment. In the Memphis case, the legislature literally ripped asunder a legitimate non-gerrymandered Congressional District to the readily apparent prejudice of that District’s racial majority, in violation of the anti-dilution terms of the 15^th Amendment and of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.