Republican governors in Alabama and Tennessee announced special legislative sessions next week to draw new congressional maps – becoming the latest states to act following the Supreme Court’s further weakening of the Voting Rights Act.
“We owe it to Tennesseans to ensure our congressional districts accurately reflect the will of Tennessee voters,” Tennesee Gov. Bill Lee said in a statement on Friday, just hours after Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey called upon her state legislature to reconvene to discuss establishing a special primary election for both US House and state Senate districts “whose boundary lines are altered by court action.”
The announcements illustrate the extraordinary speed with which some Republican states in the South are moving to seize on the high court’s decision and do away with previously mandated maps designed to give voters of color the opportunity to select candidates of their choosing.
Republicans currently hold a paper-thin majority in the House, and both parties have waged a coast-to-coast mid-decade redistricting war for months, seeking to eke out a partisan advantage. But the latest limiting of the Voting Rights Act has set off a scramble to make more changes before November’s midterm elections, particularly in the South, where the legislation has historically had a significant impact.
Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling – throwing out a Black-majority district created in Louisiana – makes it significantly harder to challenge redistricting plans as discriminatory. It marks the latest move by the court’s conservative majority to dismantle key pillars of the 1965 landmark civil rights law.
Critics of the law’s continued use in redistricting argue that the country has moved past its legacy of racial discrimination.
“The Alabama in 2026 is not the Alabama of the early 1960s,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday. “It’s a new time and a different era.”
The special sessions also underscore the pressure national Republican figures and party activists have exerted on state governors in recent days.
In the immediate aftermath of the high court’s ruling, Ivey indicated that her state would not attempt to redraw its lines. Alabama currently is under a court order prohibiting the state from redistricting until after the 2030 census.
But Ivey and other officials have faced public calls to act. Marshall on Thursday filed motions asking the high court to move quickly to lift the injunctions so Alabama can proceed with redistricting.
In a statement, Ivey said she is calling the special session, set to begin Monday, in the hopes that the state will prevail in court. Alabama is currently represented in the US House by five Republicans and two Democrats, after courts ordered the creation of a second congressional district with a sizable Black population.
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump posted on social media that he had spoken with Lee about a new map in Tennessee. Any redistricting there would take aim at the Memphis-area seat held by Rep. Steve Cohen, the only Democrat remaining in Tennessee’s congressional delegation.
Tennessee’s Legislature will reconvene on Tuesday.
Alabama’s primary election currently is slated for May 19. Tennessee’s primary is in August.
Friday’s moves in these states come a day after Republican officials in Louisiana announced that they were delaying the state’s primary elections for US House, although overseas ballots have already been mailed. Louisiana officials say they will not count votes cast in the May 16 election for US House seats, as the legislature looks to draw a new map.
Voters, civil rights organizations and other groups have filed legal challenges, seeking to block the Louisiana plan.
Officials in other Republican-controlled states across the South also are facing intense lobbying to draw new maps.
Several gubernatorial candidates in South Carolina have called on lawmakers in the GOP-controlled state legislature to consider new boundaries that would target the state’s sole Democrat, 17-term Rep. Jim Clyburn, for defeat. The US Supreme Court previously upheld the state’s current congressional map.
Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, on Friday said it would be “appropriate” for lawmakers “to ensure that South Carolina’s congressional map still complies with all requirements of federal law and the U.S. Constitution.”
The South Carolina Legislature is still in session. That state’s primary election is June 9.
This headline and story have been updated with additional details.
CNN’s John Fritze and Dianne Gallagher contributed to this report.
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