Published: Thursday, May 23, 2024
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on May 23, giving a victory to South Carolina Republicans. They were able to defend a map that they drew, which moved 30,000 Blacks out of a congressional district in coastal Carolina.
Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference was closely followed ahead of the U.S. elections on November 5, where the president and control of both chambers will be decided. The Democrats lost the majority of the 435 seats in the House in 2022 and hope to overturn the narrow Republican majority with each competitive district being crucial for the outcome.
The Supreme Court reversed a lower-court ruling that the Republican map violated Black voters’ rights under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees equal treatment under the law.
The court’s conservative majority said in a 6-3 decision that the Republican-controlled state legislature did nothing wrong during redistricting when it strengthened Rep. Nancy Mace’s hold on the coastal district, reported the AP.
The AP reported in dissent that liberal justices stated the ruling will “impede racial gerrymandering generally.”
The state claimed that the congressional map was explained by partisan politics and not race. It also cited a population boom along the coast. The Supreme Court ruled that it is permissible to move voters based on politics. South Carolina was ordered to redistribute the district by a lower court after finding that it had used race to represent partisanship in violation of equal protection clauses of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. The AP reported that the court had put the order on hold, and allowed the state use the challenged map for the 2024 elections.
The AP reported that Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court and criticized lower-court judge for their “misguided” approach, which refused to assume that legislators acted in good conscience, and gave too much credence to the challengers.
The AP reported that Mr. Alito said that the Black voters were weak because they didn’t produce an alternate map. He called this an “implicit admission” that they could not have drawn one. He wrote that the District Court’s conclusion was clearly wrong because it didn’t follow this logic.
The AP reported that Justice Elena Kagan, who wrote for the three liberals in the case, claimed her conservative colleagues ignored their lower court’s findings that the district was gerrymandered based on race.
The AP reported that “perhaps most discouragingly,” wrote Ms. Kagan, “the court adopted special rules to disadvantage suits in order to remedy redistricting based on race.”
The Republicans have a 217-213 majority in the House.
The ongoing legal battles in other states over redistricting could be enough to determine the control of the House during the election.
The South Carolina legal battle centered around a map that was adopted by the Republican-led State Legislature in 2022 that redrew boundaries for one of seven U.S. House Districts of the state – a district that includes portions of Charleston on the Atlantic Coast.
In January 2023, a federal panel of three judges ruled that the map illegally divided Black neighborhoods in Charleston County into separate areas and was a “stark race gerrymander”.
Gerrymandering involves manipulating the boundaries of electoral districts in order to reduce the influence of certain voters while increasing the influence of other voters. In this case the state legislature has been accused of racial-gerrymandering in order to reduce the influence Black voters who favor Democratic candidates.
Every decade, the boundaries of the legislative districts are redrawn in order to reflect the population changes as measured by the U.S. census. Redistricting in most states is carried out by the ruling party.
The new South Carolina map increased the share of white votes in the district while reducing the share of Black votes, which was referred to by the lower court as “bleaching.”
The map moved 30,000 Black residents from the 1st district to the 6th district which is 125 miles inland of Charleston. The three-judge panel concluded that these voters had been “exiled” unlawfully.
Jim Clyburn has held the 6th district for over 30 years. He is one of the most notable Black members of Congress. The only South Carolina House district held by a Democrat is Mr. Clyburn’s.
In 2020, Republican Nancy Mace narrowly won the election over an incumbent Democrat – by less than 1 percentage point or 5,400 votes. After the redistricting in 2022, Ms. Mace was re-elected by a margin of 14 percentage points. The AP reported that she was one of eight Republicans who voted to remove Kevin McCarthy, R.-Calif. as House Speaker in October.
In October, the Supreme Court heard arguments. The Supreme Court was asked by the parties to resolve the dispute before the end of 2023.
The Supreme Court restored on May 15, in a separate ruling regarding redistricting, a newly-drawn Louisiana electoral map, which includes two U.S. House Districts with a majority of Blacks, instead of the previous version. The Supreme Court temporarily stopped a lower court decision that had thrown out the new map. This allowed its use for this year’s elections.
This case was different from the one in Alabama, where the court ruled that Republican legislators diluted Black voters’ power under the landmark Voting Right Act by drawing only one district with a major Black population. According to the AP, the court’s ruling led to a map that included a second district with a majority of Black voters who lean Democratic.
Black voters in South Carolina would not have been as many with a redistributed district. The AP reported that if Democrats had been able to combine a large group of white voters who lean Democratic with a significant number of black voters, they could have won the district.