State attorneys say the governor and legislature are ‘immune’ to the lawsuit.
Image Credit: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout
By: Cassandra Stephenson [Tennessee Lookout-CC BY-NC-ND 4.0] –
***Note from The Tennessee Conservative – this article posted here for informational purposes only. Per The Tennessee Lookout’s Republishing Guidelines, this article has been edited for writing style & length.***
State attorneys are asking the court to deny the NAACP Tennessee chapter’s request to stop a redrawn congressional map from going into effect before the 2026 election.
NAACP Tennessee President Gloria Sweet-Love and the NAACP Tennessee State Conference filed an emergency petition in Davidson County Chancery Court on May 7, hours after Gov. Bill Lee signed into law the new U.S. House district map.
State attorneys contend that the governor and the Tennessee General Assembly, both named as defendants, do not conduct elections and have sovereign immunity, and are therefore “immune from this suit,” according to a response filed Friday by Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s office.
The Tennessee Legislature’s Republican supermajority proposed and passed the new map in a three-day special session called by Lee at President Donald Trump’s instruction after a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision altered part of the Voting Rights Act. To do so, legislators first had to repeal a long-standing Tennessee law that forbade mid-decade redistricting.
The NAACP’s lawsuit argues that Lee did not specifically state that the special session’s purpose included repealing that law. State law requires special legislative sessions to be limited to the purpose stated in the governor’s proclamation.
The law’s repeal was lawful, the state argues, because it was captured under the special session’s purpose of “making statutory changes that are necessary” to redraw Tennessee’s congressional districts.
The NAACP and Sweet-Love contend that “the Governor didn’t use just the right magic words to describe the exact election laws he hoped to change when he convened the Special Session, and so any legislation resulting from the special session is ‘void,’” Skrmetti’s filing read. “Plaintiffs take an all too jaundiced view of the Tennessee Constitution and the Governor’s Proclamation that began the Special Session.”
The lawsuit also challenged a provision that suspends residency requirements for candidates in the newly drawn districts, similarly stating that this was not included in Lee’s proclamation prior to the special session.
The state’s response said the lawsuit fails to identify “imminent harm.”
“With the recent changes to the qualifying requirements, the state has relaxed barriers to becoming a candidate,” the filing said. “In such circumstances, Plaintiffs can assert no imminent harm from that expansion of the potential candidate pool.”
State attorneys also wrote that the lawsuit does not provide evidence of election administration problems. Rather, the Division of Elections has already begun to implement the new plan for the 2026 election, including the changes to districts and candidate qualifying and residency requirements, becoming the “status quo.”
The state pointed to Purcell v. Gonzalez, a 2006 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court decided rules should not be changed too close to an election to avoid causing confusion. Notably, opponents of the redrawn maps also cite the so-called Purcell Principle in arguments that the new map should not be implemented for the 2026 election.
The state hired three attorneys from Arlington, Virginia-based law firm Consovoy McCarthy to work on the case.
The Tennessee Supreme Court on Monday afternoon named the three-judge panel that will hear the case: Chancellor Anne Martin (Middle Tennessee, chief judge), Chancellor Tony Childress (Western Tennessee), and Judge James Gass (Eastern Tennessee).
