Supreme Court protects GOP gerrymanders by sabotaging Black voters' rights

The Supreme Court's right-wing majority upheld South Carolina's congressional map in a 6-3 decision along ideological lines issued Thursday, reversing a lower court ruling that found Republicans had violated the Constitution by racially gerrymandering the 1st District to protect Rep. Nancy Mace, a white Republican.

The majority ruled that politics—not race—was the predominant factor in the GOP's gerrymander, which shifted Black voters from the 1st District to the neighboring 6th to ensure conservative white voters would still dominate in the 1st.

This latest decision all but eliminates one of the few remaining tools that voters of color had left to challenge racism in redistricting. Because the court's Republican-appointed majority ruled in 2019 that federal courts cannot adjudicate partisan gerrymandering challenges, allowing Republican mapmakers to claim partisan motives as a defense against racial gerrymandering only entrenches both kinds of gerrymanders.