A three-judge panel ordered the legislature to redraw Tennessee's state Senate districts in a decision handed down Wednesday.
The Tennessee Constitution requires that if a county has multiple Senate districts, those districts be numbered consecutively. Under the plan passed earlier this year, Davidson County has four districts numbered 17, 19, 20 and 21. While an amendment was offered to renumber the four districts as 18, 19, 20 and 21, it was not approved.
The panel ruled that this objection to the redistricting plan was likely to succeed at trial and granted an injunction against the map's implementation, ordering the legislature to pass a new map compliant with the constitution within 15 days. If it doesn't, the judges will issue a map for the 2022 legislative elections. Because of the delay, the panel also extended the filing deadline to May 5.
The judges did allow the state House maps to stay in place until trial. The plaintiffs argued the state House maps split more counties than necessary. The state constitution actually prohibits counties from being split if a district crosses county lines — in other words, under the black-letter language of the constitution, multi-county districts are permitted, but those districts can only include entire counties. United States Supreme Court decisions in the 1960s — particularly Reynolds v. Sims — barred states from enforcing some of the more arcane apportionment schemes enshrined in their constitutions. (And this isn't just a Southern phenomenon; New Hampshire's state Senate, for example, was apportioned on aggregate tax base rather than population).
In any event, the literal requirement from the constitution is dormant, but courts have ruled the spirit of the constitutional mandate can be met if county splits are minimized. The judges in the instant case found that while it appeared there were ways to apportion the state House while splitting fewer than the 30 counties divided under the plan passed this year, it was a question best answered at trial. Thus, the map for the House was allowed to stand.
Thus far, there's been no court challenge to the U.S. House maps that resulted in a tripartite Davidson County.
