Bill Lee
Republican Tennessee governor; signed map carving Memphis three ways, eliminating Cohen's 9th District on 7 May 2026.
Governor Bill Lee signed Tennessee's redrawn congressional map on 7 May 2026, eliminating the state's only Black-majority district, and a federal panel refused to block it on 23 July.
Last refreshed: 26 July 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Can any court reverse Tennessee's signed post-Callais map before the 2026 elections?
Timeline for Bill Lee
Signed the redrawn congressional map in May
US Midterms 2026: Mentioned in: Tennessee map survives its first testSigned new congressional map eliminating the majority-Black 9th district
US Midterms 2026: Tennessee signs map carving Memphis three waysCalled extraordinary legislative session targeting Steve Cohen's TN-9 Memphis seat after Callais ruling
US Midterms 2026: Four states queue maps after Callais rulingBackground
Bill Lee is the Republican Governor of Tennessee, first elected in 2018 and re-elected in 2022. He has presided over a Republican supermajority in the state legislature throughout his tenure.
His speed in acting on the 2026 congressional map, calling an extraordinary session within a day of a Supreme Court ruling and securing a signed map inside two weeks, set the pace other Republican-led states in the same redistricting wave were then measured against.
Tennessee has no state constitutional Fair Districts equivalent, unlike Florida, so legal challenges to maps Lee signs have less state-law traction than they would elsewhere, leaving federal courts as the only forum available to challengers.
His map survived its first legal test
Within 24 hours of the Supreme Court's Louisiana v. Callais ruling on 29 April 2026, Lee called an extraordinary session targeting Steve Cohen's Memphis-based 9th District, moving faster than South Carolina, Mississippi or Alabama in the same post-Callais wave. He signed the new map on 7 May, two days after the session convened, carving Memphis across the 5th, 8th and 9th districts and eliminating the state's only majority-Black seat.
A three-judge federal panel declined to block that map on 23 July, ruling the redraw was driven by partisan advantage rather than race, the defence Rucho v. Common Cause makes available against a partisan (though not racial) gerrymander; a separate vote-dilution trial continues.