US Supreme Court backs S. Carolina Republicans in race-based voting map
fight
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[May 24, 2024]
By John Kruzel and Andrew Chung
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court made it harder on Thursday
to prove racial discrimination in electoral maps in a major ruling
backing South Carolina Republicans who moved out 30,000 Black residents
when they redrew a congressional district.
The 6-3 decision, with the conservative justices in the majority and
liberal justices dissenting, reversed a lower court's ruling that the
map had violated the rights of Black voters under the U.S.
Constitution's 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under
the law. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote the decision.
The liberal justices expressed alarm that the decision makes it more
difficult for legal challengers - who in this case included the NAACP
civil rights group, the American Civil Liberties Union and Black voters
- to demonstrate that an electoral map unconstitutionally discriminates
based on race.
"What a message to send to state legislators and mapmakers" who often
have incentives to use race to achieve partisan ends or suppress the
electoral influence of racial minorities, Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a
dissent joined by the two other liberals. "Go right ahead, this court
says to states today."
President Joe Biden, a Democrat, said the ruling "undermines the basic
principle that voting practices should not discriminate on account of
race."
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"This decision threatens South Carolinians' ability to have their voices
heard at the ballot box, and the districting plan the court upheld is
part of a dangerous pattern of racial gerrymandering efforts from
Republican elected officials to dilute the will of Black voters," Biden
added.
Gerrymandering involves the manipulation of the geographical boundaries
of electoral districts to marginalize a certain set of voters and
increase the influence of others. In this case, the
Republican-controlled state legislature was accused of racial
gerrymandering to reduce the influence of Black voters.
The fight centered on the boundaries drawn in 2022 by the legislature
for one of South Carolina's seven U.S. House of Representatives
districts. The new map increased the district's share of white voters
while reducing its share of Black voters, which the lower court called
"bleaching."
Black voters tend to support Democratic candidates.
Alito wrote that there was "no direct evidence" that race predominated
in the design of the district and that "circumstantial evidence falls
far short of showing that race, not partisan preferences, drove the
districting process."
The Supreme Court sided with South Carolina Republicans who had argued
that the district, which includes parts of Charleston along the Atlantic
coast, was drawn to achieve partisan advantage. The Supreme Court in
2019 decided that map-making for partisan gain was not reviewable by
federal courts - unlike redistricting mainly motivated by race, which
remains illegal.
The boundaries of legislative districts across the country are redrawn
to reflect population changes every decade. In most states,
redistricting is done by the party in power.
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![](../images/052424PIX/news_t45.jpg)
A person receives a "I voted" sticker during early voting at the
Lexington County Voter Registration Office ahead of the Republican
presidential primary election in Lexington, South Carolina, U.S.
February 22, 2024. REUTERS/Alyssa Pointer/File Photo
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2024/May/24/images/ads/current/aeps_lda_013124.png)
The lower court in March, because of the length of time it took the
Supreme Court to act after hearing arguments in October, decided
that the disputed map could be used in the Nov. 5 U.S. election that
will decide which party controls the House.
Using this map could undercut Democratic chances of regaining a
House majority after losing it in 2022. Republicans hold a 217-213
majority. Every competitive district could be crucial to the
outcome, with legal battles over redistricting in various states
still playing out.
'STARK RACIAL GERRYMANDER'
A federal three-judge panel in January 2023 ruled that the map at
issue unlawfully sorted voters by race and deliberately split up
Black neighborhoods in Charleston County in a "stark racial
gerrymander."
Alito wrote that the panel took a "misguided approach." Alito also
said that lower courts should be skeptical when challengers like
those in this case fail to produce an alternative map capable of
achieving a legislature's "legitimate political objectives" but with
greater racial balance.
"A plaintiff's failure to submit an alternative map - precisely
because it can be designed with ease - should be interpreted by
district courts as an implicit concession that the plaintiff cannot
draw a map that undermines the legislature's defense that the
districting lines were 'based on a permissible, rather than a
prohibited, ground,'" Alito wrote.
The ruling also threw out the lower court's finding that the map had
intentionally diluted the electoral power of Black voters, ordering
it to reconsider that issue using stringent criteria under Supreme
Court precedents.
"We should demand better - of ourselves, of our political
representatives, and most of all of this court," Kagan wrote, adding
that the ruling "thwarts efforts to undo a pernicious kind of
race-based discrimination," and is "meant to scuttle gerrymandering
cases."
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Republican South Carolina state senator Thomas Alexander, one of the
parties who defended the map, said the court "affirmed the hard work
of South Carolina senators and the product they produced as
constitutional."
The map shifted 30,000 Black residents from South Carolina's 1st
congressional district into the neighboring 6th district, the
state's only House district represented by a Democrat. With the 1st
district's previous boundaries, Republican Nancy Mace only narrowly
defeated an incumbent Democrat in 2020. With the redistricting, Mace
comfortably won re-election in 2022.
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)
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