South Carolina election maps that moved Black voters out of a competitive Congressional district are legal, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
In a 6-3 decision, the nation’s highest court overturned a federal court decision that ruled the maps were unconstitutional and violated the 14th Amendment. The court split along ideological lines, with the six conservatives comprising the majority while the three liberals dissented.
“The Challengers provided no direct evidence of a racial gerrymander, and their circumstantial evidence is very weak,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion. “Instead the Challengers relied on deeply flawed expert reports.”
South Carolina’s 1st District, currently represented by Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, was hotly contested during the 2020 election, and Mace won it by 1%. But in 2022, after the district was redrawn, she cruised to re-election by 14%.
Republican lawmakers in the South Carolina state legislature had changed the maps by moving 30,000 Black voters from the 1st District into the state’s 6th District, the only Democratic-leaning district in the state. A group of organizations, led by the South Carolina NAACP, challenged the maps and claimed they were racially gerrymandered.
But the Supreme Court ruled the maps are legal. The majority argued the mapmakers were only trying to aid Republicans, not functionally disenfranchise Black people.
“Where race and politics are highly correlated, a map that has been gerrymandered to achieve a partisan end can look very similar to a racially gerrymandered map,” Alito wrote.
Justice Elena Kagan penned the liberal dissent, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“What a message to send to state legislators and mapmakers about racial gerrymandering,” Kagan wrote. “Those actors will often have an incentive to use race as a proxy to achieve partisan ends.”
Mace, who was one of eight Republicans who voted to oust former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, was already set to cruise to re-election in 2024. Though the lower court had ruled the election map unconstitutional, it had also allowed it to remain in place for the 2024 cycle for practical reasons.
“The highest court in our land greenlit racial discrimination in South Carolina’s redistricting process,” NAACP Legal Defense Fund president and director-counsel Janai Nelson said, adding the high court “sent a message that facts, process, and precedent will not protect the Black vote.”
