WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that South Carolina Republicans illegally failed to consider race when they drew congressional districts in a way that excluded thousands of Black voters, making it harder for civil rights plaintiffs to bring racial gerrymandering claims.
The Supreme Court said civil rights groups had not sufficiently shown that lawmakers had focused on racial issues in drawing the Charleston-area district, which is ideologically split 6-3 with a conservative majority and currently represented by Republican Rep. Nancy Mace.
While the Supreme Court has been hearing the case much more slowly than expected, the lower court that invalidated the maps has ruled that they can be used in this year’s election.
So while the justices’ ruling won’t have an immediate impact on South Carolina, it could set the rules for future redistricting efforts and make it easier for mapmakers to draw maps that disadvantage black voters if they can show they are focusing on politics, not race.
In the South, black voters tend to be Democrats, so it can be hard to separate race from politics.
The court sided with Republican state officials, who argued that their sole goal was to increase the district’s Republican tilt.
As a result of the ruling, Mace’s district will not have to be redrawn, a blow to Democrats hoping to secure more favorable maps. The lawsuit based on other claims brought by the plaintiffs against the map may continue.
In the majority opinion, conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote that there was “no direct evidence” to support the lower court’s finding that race was an important consideration when the map was drawn. .
He added that the “circumstantial evidence goes far beyond showing that race, rather than partisan preferences, drove the redistricting process.”
Alito added that state lawmakers faced with claims that maps were drawn with discriminatory intent should be given the benefit of the doubt.
“We should not be so quick to hurl such accusations at the political branch,” he wrote.
In a dissenting opinion, liberal Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the majority had “created a disadvantageous situation for the challengers.” They say evidence of the impact on black voters can easily be sidestepped if states can present an alternative narrative that claims voters were divided based on partisan interests.
“What a great message to send to state legislators and map makers about racial gerrymandering,” she added.
The message to politicians who “might want to radically curtail the electoral influence of minority voters” is “go ahead,” Kagan said.
The Supreme Court was reviewing a lower court ruling in January 2023 that found race was the primary concern in drawing one of the state’s seven electoral districts. Republicans, led by South Carolina Senate President Thomas Alexander, appealed the ruling.
Republicans redrawn the boundaries after the 2020 Census to strengthen Republican control of the battleground districts.
Democrat Joe Cunningham won the seat in 2018 and narrowly lost to Mace in 2020. Two years later, new districting took place and Mace won by a larger margin.
The approximately 30,000 black voters who were moved from their districts were placed in the district of Democratic U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, who is black. It is the only district among the seven Congressional districts held by Democrats.
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and other civil rights groups argued that Republicans not only illegally took race into account when drawing maps, but that in doing so they were undermining the power of black voters.
The claim was brought under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which requires that laws apply equally to everyone. The case arose under a different legal theory than a major decision this year in which civil rights groups successfully challenged Republican-drawn maps in Alabama under the Voting Rights Act.
