U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN-09) released a statement smearing the nation’s highest court as “Donald Trump’s Jim Crow Supreme Court” following Wednesday’s ruling in a high stakes case that has opened the door to redrawing Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District.
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in the case Louisiana v. Callais that Louisiana’s revised congressional map, which was designed to create a second majority-Black district, constituted an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito emphasized that race-based districting must meet a very high constitutional bar, which essentially narrows how the Voting Rights Act can be applied when drawing congressional districts.
Amid Wednesday’s ruling, President Donald Trump has since announced that he has spoken with Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, confirming that the governor will “work hard” to redraw the state’s 9th Congressional District.
Immediately after the Court released the decision, Cohen released an initial statement saying he was “disappointed,” further arguing that “the Court has diluted the Voting Rights Act which guaranteed minority voters the right to elect the representative of their choosing.”
At the time, Cohen also cautioned that if Tennessee lawmakers moved to redraw the district, he would pursue “every option, legal and political,” to oppose such efforts.
However, after Trump publicly stated he had spoken with the governor and encouraged redistricting, Cohen escalated his tone against the Court.
In a follow-up statement, Cohen accused Republicans of attempting to strip political power from Black voters and went further, characterizing the Court as a “Jim Crow” court and branding Wednesday’s ruling as “the greatest setback to civil rights since Plessy v. Ferguson in the Jim Crow era.”
Enforced in the South for decades, Jim Crow laws were enacted during a period when Southern state governments, largely controlled by Democrats at the time, imposed racial segregation and restrictions on voting rights.
In contrast to Cohen’s characterization of the ruling, members of the Court’s majority framed the decision as a step away from race-based districting. In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that prior interpretations of the Voting Rights Act had pushed courts and legislatures toward dividing voters along racial lines.
Thomas wrote that those interpretations effectively created “an entitlement to roughly proportional representation” for racial groups and led to districts being drawn primarily based on race. He described that approach as inconsistent with what he called the Constitution’s commitment to a “color-blind” legal framework.
Thomas further argued that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act should not apply to redistricting at all, maintaining that the law is focused on access to voting – such as ballot access and counting procedures – rather than how district lines are drawn.
Aside from Cohen, Tennessee State Rep. Justin Pearson (D-Memphis), who is currently a candidate in the Democratic primary for the 9th Congressional District, called the Court’s ruling a “racist attack and assault on our democracy.”
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X.
Photo “Rep. Steve Cohen” by Rep. Steve Cohen.
