Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee announced Friday that he will call a special session of the Tennessee General Assembly next week to focus on the state’s congressional map following a recent U.S. Supreme Court redistricting ruling.
The Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s racially-gerrymandered maps Wednesday that created a second majority-black district, ruling that the changes were unconstitutional. Lee said lawmakers will formally review Tennessee’s congressional boundaries and said any changes must be enacted quickly to ensure Tennesseans have “reflective representation.”
“We owe it to Tennesseans to ensure our congressional districts accurately reflect the will of Tennessee voters,” Lee said, Just the News reported. “After consultation with the Lt. Governor, Speaker of the House, Attorney General, and Secretary of State, I believe the General Assembly has a responsibility to review the map and ensure it remains fair, legal, and defensible.”
Lee said the special session will take place on May 5. It comes after several other GOP- and Democrat-controlled states have undergone redistricting including California and Virginia on the Democrat side and Missouri, Texas, Florida, and North Carolina on the Republican side.
That said, Virginia’s map has been stalled by a state court after it was narrowly approved by voters, with the judge issuing a ruling that the changes were a violation of the state constitution and state law. It now sits before the Virginia Supreme Court, which last week denied a request for an emergency stay of the lower court’s order.
The ruling is merely on the request for a stay, as experts explained, not on the merits of the appeal. It comes after the court heard arguments on Monday about whether the vote approving the gerrymander earlier this month was legal and constitutional.
If upheld, the newly redrawn map, which was only narrowly approved by a 51-48.3% margin, would change the current 6R-5R congressional seat makeup to 10D-1R. “The proposed amendment is invalid for several reasons, any one of which is sufficient to invalidate the proposed amendment and require invalidation of the vote,” Thomas McCarthy, a lawyer for the Republican challengers, concluded in the hour-long hearing on Monday.
Republicans argue that the Democrat-led General Assembly violated procedural rules by presenting a constitutional amendment to voters, which would allow mid-decade redistricting.
If the court determines that the lawmakers did indeed break these rules, it could invalidate the amendment, making last week’s statewide vote meaningless.
“It’s often said ours is a government of laws, not of men,” McCarthy continued. “Sadly, that’s not the case if a bare partisan majority can circumvent the constitutional amendment process and undermine the rights of the people in whom all government power ultimately rests – also, that partisan majority can transform our system from a nonpartisan one where the voters elected representatives into a partisan one where the representatives select their voters.”
“We ask that the court enforce the constitutional amendment process by affirming the decision below, declaring the proposed amendment invalid and enjoin certification of the election,” he added.
New: The Supreme Court of Virginia has denied a request for an emergency stay of last week’s Tazewell ruling that said the State Board of Elections can’t certify the results of Virginia’s redistricting referendum.
This is just a ruling on the request for a stay and not on the… pic.twitter.com/iTU1i01d7O
— Tyler Englander (@TylerEnglander) April 28, 2026
Attorneys for Democratic legislative leaders urged the Virginia Supreme Court to uphold the amendment and allow the new map, arguing that voters and lawmakers had followed every step required by the state Constitution.
In rebuttal, attorney Matthew Seligman said, “The people did, in fact, validly ratify the proposed amendment last Tuesday,” arguing further that challengers were trying to undo a democratic process that had already been completed through legislative approval and a statewide vote.
At one point, the justices acknowledged that courts allowed the vote to be held despite ongoing legal challenges.
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