Memphis

Memphis was split three ways across the 5th, 8th and 9th congressional districts when Governor Bill Lee signed Tennessee's new congressional map on 7 May 2026. The redraw eliminates the majority-Black 9th district held by Representative Steve Cohen, converting Memphis from a city that could elect its own representative into a minority appendage of three Republican-leaning districts. The map was produced in a special session convened on 5 May, and all nine districts in the state are now Republican-leaning.

Memphis is the largest majority-Black city in Tennessee, with a population of approximately 620,000 and a history of electing Black representatives to Congress. The 9th district, anchored in Memphis, has returned African American representatives continuously since Harold Ford Sr. won it in 1974. Eliminating the district is the sharpest immediate consequence of the post-Callais redistricting cycle, which is projected to deliver up to two additional Republican House seats by January 2027 without a single vote being cast in Tennessee.

The carving pattern — distributing an urban core across multiple surrounding rural districts — has been a recurring motif in partisan redistricting nationally. In Memphis's case, the Shelby County line is the geographic mechanism. The Cato Institute cited the Tennessee map as evidence that the DOJ voter-data programme and redistricting are part of a coordinated strategy to limit minority political power in urban centres.