U.S. Supreme Court rules South Carolina’s voting map does not impermissibly exclude black voters

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a Republican-led South Carolina congressional district, overturning lower court rulings that struck it down as the product of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering that excluded black voters.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the court in a 6-3 decision with which the liberal justices disagreed, said the lower court’s ruling that race was used unconstitutionally to diminish voter influence blacks was “clearly erroneous” because she had not properly analyzed the question. facts.

“A party challenging the constitutionality of a map must disentangle race and politics if it is to prove that the legislature was motivated by race and not partisanship. Second, in evaluating the work of a legislature, we Let us proceed with the presumption that the Legislature acted in good faith,” Alito wrote. “In this case…the three-judge district court gave only lip service to these propositions.”

The case was at issue in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, which stretches from Savannah and Hilton Head to Charleston and is represented by Republican Rep. Nancy Mace.

When the district was redrawn after the 2020 census, it moved several predominantly black neighborhoods to the neighboring 6th District. As a result, he faced a challenge from the South Carolina NAACP and resident Taiwan Scott.

Scott, the only individual plaintiff and a member of the indigenous Gullah community, told ABC News that he believed the way the new district was drawn was “deliberate” and that he “seized our opportunity to elect a representative outside of us.

But Justice Alito, writing for the conservative majority, said “the challengers have provided no direct evidence of a racial gerrymander and their circumstantial evidence is very weak.”

The decision ensures that the district will remain solidly Republican in the 2024 elections. In an earlier version of the map, the district had been divided more evenly; a Democrat held the seat as recently as 2018.

Justice Elena Kagan, dissenting, wrote that the Supreme Court showed little respect for the lower court’s intensive investigation and its conclusion that the expulsion of 30,000 black voters from the district amounted to “whitewashing.” .

“What a message to send to state legislators and mappers on racial gerrymandering,” Kagan wrote. “These actors will often have incentives to use race as a proxy to achieve partisan goals. And sometimes, they may want to remove the electoral influence of minority voters altogether.”

“This abhorrent practice of sorting citizens, based on racial generalizations and exploiting racial divisions, will continue,” she continued. “In elections in particular, where ugly patterns of pervasive racial discrimination have governed for so long, we should demand better – of ourselves, of our political representatives and, above all, of this Court. Respectfully, I disagree .”