The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has dismissed its lawsuit challenging Fayette County’s 2021 electoral map as discriminatory after county lawmakers passed a new map that complies with the Voting Rights Act and U.S. Constitution, the group said.
The lawsuit, filed in the Western District of Tennessee in late February, claimed that the map adopted by the Fayette County Commission in 2021 was chosen “at least in part with the intent to racially discriminate against Black voters.”
The Tennessee Comptroller’s local redistricting guide requires county legislative bodies to consider minority representation when redistricting. Black voters make up more than 25% of Fayette County’s population, but the 19-member commission is entirely white. The lawsuit stated that the commission chose an electoral map in 2021 that diluted the power of Black voters to elect candidates of their choice.
The commission approved a redistricting plan that had no majority-minority districts — rejecting other plans that included districts with majority Black voting age populations — against the advice of outside legal counsel and the commission’s own redistricting committee.
The U.S. Justice Department sued the Fayette County Board of Commissioners in January, also alleging that the board’s adoption of the 2021 map violated the Voting Rights Act.