Which Tennessee congressional districts have faced gerrymandering lawsuits and when were they filed?

1. The 2023 federal complaint that named the U.S. House map — who sued and when

Civil rights groups and Tennessee voters filed a federal lawsuit in Nashville on August 9, 2023, alleging that the congressional map enacted in early 2022 intentionally discriminated against Black voters and other communities of color by splintering Davidson County into three congressional districts and splitting parts of Shelby County, claims brought under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments by plaintiffs including the Tennessee State Conference of the NAACP, the League of Women Voters of Tennessee and other organizations ^{[1] [2] [5]}.

2. What the federal suit targeted — the Nashville split and the seat that flipped

The federal complaint focused on the new U.S. House plan’s decision to break the longtime Davidson County-centered congressional district into pieces that extend into rural counties, a change critics say enabled Republicans to flip a Democratic seat in 2022 (Andy Ogles’s victory in the district that was redrawn was cited in reporting), and it also challenged the treatment of state Senate District 31 in Shelby County ^{[2] [5] [4]}.

3. Earlier and parallel challenges in 2022 — state lawsuits and procedural fights

Litigation began even earlier: three individuals filed suit in February 2022 alleging Tennessee’s legislative maps violated the state constitution (including numbering and other technical claims) and a Davidson County chancery court initially blocked the senate map before the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed that injunction in April 2022; that same period saw multiple state-court challenges to the legislature’s 2022 plans for House and Senate districts ^{[6] [7] [8]}.

4. Court outcomes and legal framing — dismissal, political vs. racial gerrymandering, and plaintiffs’ decision

A three-judge federal panel dismissed the 2023 racial-gerrymandering suit in August 2024, finding the record could be explained by partisan—rather than racial—motives (a distinction that matters because federal courts are constrained in policing partisan gerrymanders for congressional maps), and plaintiffs ultimately announced they would not refile after concluding new Supreme Court standards made proving racial intent more difficult; state-court rulings separately found problems with Tennessee’s senate map numbering and other technical violations in 2023 proceedings ^{[9] [4] [3] [10]}.

5. Narrow answer: which congressional districts were challenged and when the suits were filed

The primary federal challenge filed August 9, 2023 attacked Tennessee’s post‑2020 U.S. House map as drawn in early 2022 — specifically the redistricting choice to split Davidson County (the Nashville-centered congressional seat that was effectively dismantled and whose reconfiguration led to a GOP flip) into three districts and to alter boundaries affecting Shelby County — while earlier litigation over legislative maps began in February 2022 and continued in state court through 2023 ^{[2] [1] [6] [7]}.

6. Competing narratives and what the sources reveal about motive and remedy

Plaintiffs and civil‑rights groups framed the litigation as a racial gerrymander intended to dilute Black voting strength in Nashville and Memphis, while judges and state defenders emphasized partisan motivation and procedural defects; public reporting and court rulings show the dispute centered on the 2022 enacted maps (federal and state) with the federal racial‑gerrymandering claim filed on August 9, 2023 ultimately dismissed in 2024 and state‑level challenges tracing back to February 2022 and the spring 2022 injunction exchanges ^{[1] [2] [9] [7] [3]}.