Supreme Court to decide South Carolina racial gerrymander case

The Supreme Court on Monday announced it will determine whether South Carolina racially gerrymandered one of its congressional districts.

A three-judge district court panel in January ordered new maps be drawn after finding the state’s 1st Congressional District, as drawn by Republican state lawmakers, was specifically designed to dilute the power of Black voters.

The Supreme Court justices, in a brief, unsigned order, as is typical, agreed to hear the Republicans' bid to reverse the lower decision, setting up a major redistricting case for the Supreme Court’s next annual term. The case is likely to be argued this fall.

The longtime Republican district runs along much of South Carolina’s coast and is currently represented by Rep. Nancy Mace (R). 

In 2020, Mace narrowly defeated her Democratic opponent, who had won the seat in a major upset two years earlier. Last year, after district lines were redrawn, Mace won reelection by nearly 14 percentage points. The district is rated “likely Republican” for the next election cycle by the Cook Political Report.

A resident of the district and the South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP challenged the redrawn lines, winning a partial victory at the district court earlier this year.

The three Democratic-appointed judges ruled against the challengers in their other claims while agreeing with them that state lawmakers’ shifting some 30,000 African Americans in Charleston County to a nearby district “was more than a coincidence” and violated the 14th and 15th Amendments.

The Republican state lawmakers then appealed to the justices.

“The three-judge panel abandoned all pretext of extraordinary caution in this case,” their attorneys wrote in court filings. “In striking down an isolated portion of South Carolina Congressional District 1 as a racial gerrymander, the panel never even mentioned the presumption of the General Assembly’s ‘good faith.’”

The challengers to the map contended the maps are a racial gerrymander and were designed with a discriminatory purpose, asking the court to affirm the lower ruling.

“Because the panel correctly applied settled standards, the Court should summarily affirm,” the challengers wrote to the justices. “The panel had ample evidence to support its findings and conclusions. That includes direct and circumstantial proof of race-based intent by the Enacted Plan’s legislative architect and mapmaker — the same kind this Court has repeatedly relied on in the past.”