By Skyler Baldwin | The U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 in a May 23 decision to reverse a lower court ruling that struck down a 2021 remap of the state’s First Congressional District.
Last year, a panel of three federal judges ruled the new district map had been racially gerrymandered by the state legislature by moving 30,000 Black voters from Charleston County out of the district.
Today’s decision, however, doesn’t affect this year’s election. Earlier this year, an appellate court ruled that the 2021 map should be used in the 2024 election because the high court had not ruled. But today’s ruling does mean the 2021 map will be used through 2030.
“Today is a dark day for democracy in South Carolina, but all hope is not lost,” Jace Woodrum, executive director of the ACLU of South Carolina said in a press release. “For now, the Supreme Court has upheld a racially gerrymandered map, and South Carolina voters are the ones who will suffer the consequences.”
U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., agreed.
“Today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP is further affirmation that this court has chosen to disenfranchise Black voters and rob us of our fundamental access to the ballot box,” he said in a statement. “Equitable representation is the hallmark of a healthy democracy and in this case, the Supreme Court is attempting to steer the country back to a dark place in our history.”
Redrawn map challenged in 2021
The NAACP immediately challenged the GOP’s 2021 redistricting. After an eight-day trial in late 2022, a three-judge federal panel ultimately concluded the GOP map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander targeting Black voters.
But because of the lack of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, a panel of federal judges in March ruled that the 2024 election would proceed under the gerrymandered map. With this ruling, the justices said the Republican-controlled state legislature did nothing wrong during redistricting when it strengthened GOP U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace’s hold on the coastal district by moving 30,000 Democratic-leaning Black residents of Charleston County out of the district.
The ACLU, together with the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) and Arnold & Porter, participated in the 2023 trial that ruled against the map.
“Today’s decision usurps the authority of trial courts to make factual findings of racial discrimination as the unanimous panel found occurred with South Carolina’s design of Congressional District 1,” said Leah Aden, senior counsel at LDF. “The decision also defies decades of precedent that allows plaintiffs to use a wide variety of evidence to demonstrate racial discrimination in voting and forces plaintiffs to offer a particular form of proof that race more than party explains South Carolina’s line-drawing.”
A dissenting opinion today by Justice Elena Kagan, joined by justices Sonia Sotomayer and Ketanji Brown Jackson, accused the majority justices of cherry-picking evidence presented during the lower court proceedings.
“The proper response to this case is not to throw up novel roadblocks enabling South Carolina to continue dividing citizens along racial lines,” Kagan wrote. “It is to respect the plausible — no, the more than plausible — findings of the district court that the state engaged in race-based districting. And to tell the state that it must redraw District 1, this time without targeting African-American citizens.”
The majority opinion penned by Justice Samuel Alito, however, said that the district court’s findings were “clearly erroneous.” Race and politics “closely correlate” in South Carolina, and voters who challenged the congressional lines failed to provide direct evidence of a racial gerrymander, the Supreme Court said.
“Where race and partisan preferences are very closely tied, as they are here, the mere fact that District 1’s BVAP stayed more or less constant proves very little,” Alito wrote. “If 100% of Black voters voted for Democratic candidates, it is obvious that any map with the partisan breakdown that the legislature sought in District 1 — something in the range of 54% Republican to 46% Democratic — would inevitably involve the removal of a disproportionate number of Black voters.
“And since roughly 90% of Black voters cast their ballots for Democratic candidates, the same phenomenon is very likely,” he added.
First District Democratic candidate Mac Deford, who witnessed oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court in October 2023, reaffirmed his previous stance against the earlier map.
“We are deeply disappointed by the Supreme Court’s decision, which we believe fails to protect the fundamental rights of African American voters in our state,” Deford said in a press release. “However, our campaign has been prepared for this outcome, and we remain confident that we will flip this district.
“While we believe that the Roberts Court has once again ignored Black voters, we will not be deterred in our resolve to fight for every vote and ensure that all our citizens’ voices are heard.”
- Skyler Baldwin is a reporter with the Charleston City Paper. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
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