MEMPHIS, Tenn. - A three-judge federal panel on July 23 refused to block Tennessee's new congressional map, clearing the way for Memphis voters to cast ballots in three separate congressional districts in the August primary and the November general election.

The 15-page per curiam order in Sherman v. Hargett was issued by Chief U.S. District Judge William Campbell Jr., U.S. District Judge Gregory Stivers and Sixth Circuit Judge John Nalbandian, sitting as the three-judge court that federal law requires for challenges to legislative maps. The panel denied the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction, finding they were unlikely to succeed on the merits and that the remaining injunction factors also weighed against them.

The suit was brought by three Black Memphis voters and three organizations, the Black Clergy Collaborative of Memphis, the Memphis A. Philip Randolph Institute and The Equity Alliance, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Tennessee. It was filed on May 11, days after the General Assembly's special session.

At that session, Tennessee repealed a statute barring mid-decade redistricting and enacted House Bills 7001, 7002, 7003 and 7005. The new map took immediate effect. Before it, Shelby County sat inside a single district, District 9, the state's only majority-Black congressional district. The new map divides Memphis and Shelby County across three districts.

The state did not dispute its objective. According to the order, Tennessee told the court it drew the map to secure a Republican advantage in all nine of the state's congressional districts and to help keep Republicans in the U.S. House majority. The plaintiffs argued that race was also a substantial motivating factor, which is what a vote-dilution claim under the Equal Protection Clause requires them to show.

The panel found they had not shown it. The judges wrote that the plaintiffs lacked direct evidence of racial motivation, and that the map's racial effects were readily explained by the state's stated partisan aim, since Memphis votes heavily Democratic and the city is large enough to carry a Democratic candidate in whatever district contains it. The panel also faulted the plaintiffs for not offering an alternative map achieving Tennessee's political goals without splitting the city, pointing to the U.S. Supreme Court's 2026 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which requires plaintiffs to rule out a competing political explanation.

The panel addressed the plaintiffs' circumstantial evidence directly, including the map's unprecedented timing, the use of 2020 Census data, legislators declining to answer questions, and a committee chairman's public-safety framing that plaintiffs read as coded. The judges concluded that evidence was consistent with the plaintiffs' account but equally consistent with a purely partisan one, and that it did not overcome the legal presumption that a legislature acts in good faith.

On the second count, a First Amendment retaliation claim, the panel held the theory was a non-justiciable political question under Rucho v. Common Cause.

The panel also invoked the Purcell principle, the rule discouraging federal courts from changing election rules close to an election. Tennessee told the court its ballots had already been sent overseas. Early voting in the August primary began July 17, six days before the order.

The ACLU said the underlying claims remain pending and that the plaintiffs will keep litigating toward permanent relief. Amber Sherman, the named plaintiff and a Memphis voter, said the ruling further disenfranchises Black voters in Memphis. Lucas Cameron-Vaughn, legal director of the ACLU of Tennessee, said Memphis voters will now face an election under a map drawn after their district was split apart.

A separate challenge brought by the Tennessee NAACP in state court was dismissed by a different three-judge panel in May, and the Tennessee Democratic Party has dropped its own suit.

Why It Matters for Memphis

Memphis is roughly 610,000 people. A Tennessee congressional district holds about 768,000. The panel's own reasoning makes the arithmetic plain: a map designed to produce nine Republican seats has to divide Memphis, because Memphis is large enough and Democratic enough to decide any district it sits in whole. That is the court's finding, and it is also the clearest public statement yet of what the redraw was built to do.

For voters, the practical effect is immediate. The August 6 primary and the November general election will be conducted under the new lines. Residents who spent decades in a single district are now spread across three, and in each of them Memphis voters are grouped with rural voters from outside the county. The Shelby County Election Commission's key-dates document lists congressional primaries for the 8th and 9th districts on the August 6 ballot.

Accountability Watch

Who is accountable: The three-judge panel in Sherman v. Hargett, No. 3:26-cv-00616 (M.D. Tenn.)

What is pending: The underlying vote-dilution claims, which the panel expressly left pending when it denied the preliminary injunction

When: Order denying the injunction entered July 23, 2026; no trial date set as of publication

Status: Pending as of July 26, 2026

How to verify: The docket in Sherman v. Hargett via PACER, and the ACLU of Tennessee case page