Supreme Court Backs GOP’s New South Carolina Congressional Map

A majority of justices reversed a lower court ruling.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on May 15, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The U.S. Supreme Court on May 23 ruled in favor of South Carolina’s redrawn congressional map, reversing a lower court decision.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) challenged the map, arguing that legislators were motivated by race when drawing district lines and committed “intentional racial discrimination.”

A panel of federal judges in 2023 said that “race predominated over all other factors” when legislators redrew South Carolina’s First Congressional District, currently represented by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.). The finding was based in part on the movement of more than 30,000 black voters to a different district.

To show that race was the predominant factor motivating legislators who are redrawing districts, plaintiffs challenging a new map must prove that the state elevated race above other factors, such as contiguity, according to court precedent.

The judges who handed down the earlier ruling “clearly erred” because the challengers did not provide such proof, Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, said.

“[The challengers] provided no direct evidence of a racial gerrymander, and their circumstantial evidence is very weak,” he wrote. “Instead, the challengers relied on deeply flawed expert reports.”

Justice Alito, an appointee of President George W. Bush, was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, another appointee of President Bush, and Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, all appointees of President Donald Trump.

Justice Clarence Thomas, an appointee of President H. W. Bush, wrote an opinion concurring in part.

Justice Elena Kagan, an appointee of President Barack Obama, filed a dissent. She was joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, another appointee of President Obama, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, an appointee of President Joe Biden.

The panel that entered the 2023 ruling consisted of U.S. District Judges Mary Geiger Lewis and Richard Gergel, both appointees of President Obama, and U.S. Circuit Judge Toby Heytens, an appointee of President Biden.

The new map, created after the receipt of data from the 2020 census, was enacted in 2022.

“We’re always going to have concerns about elections, but I think the Supreme Court was clear. They examined the question and they followed the law,” South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican who signed the updated map, told reporters at an unrelated briefing. “I have not read it, but I know about it, and I think they made the right decision.”

South Carolina Senate President Thomas Alexander, another Republican defendant in the case, did not respond to a request for comment.

“Today, the Supreme Court has failed the American people. Voting rights have taken another gut punch, and the future of democracy in South Carolina is dangling by a thread,” Brenda Murphy, president of the South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, said in a statement.

South Carolina’s First Congressional District includes more than half of the state’s coast and parts of Charleston. It has a population of about 762,000.

Republicans won elections in the district for decades starting in the 1980s. Former Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.) upended that trend in the 2018 election. After one term, he was unseated by Ms. Mace.

Ms. Mace won with 50.6 percent of the vote in 2020 and in 2022 earned another term with 56.3 percent of the vote.

Justice Alito also criticized the lower court judges for not finding challengers at fault for their failure to provide an alternative map showing how legislators could have achieved their “legitimate political objectives” while producing “significantly greater racial balance.”

The majority also said they found similar errors in the lower court’s finding that legislators intentionally diluted the votes of black people because that finding was based on the same facts that underpinned the analysis of the racial gerrymandering claim.

Justices remanded the portion of the case relating to vote dilution back to the district court, with guidance on how to analyze dilution allegations.

Justice Thomas said in his opinion that he agreed with most of Justice Alito’s opinion but that he does not think the Supreme Court has the power to decide claims of racial gerrymandering.

“Drawing political districts is a task for politicians, not federal judges. There are no judicially manageable standards for resolving claims about districting, and, regardless, the Constitution commits those issues exclusively to the political branches,” he wrote.

Justice Kagan said in her dissent that reversing factfinding about redistricting can be done only if a “clear error” is found, citing a previous ruling. “This court must give a district court’s view of events ’significant deference,‘ which means we must uphold it so long as it is ’plausible,'” she wrote. “Under that standard, South Carolina should now have to redraw District 1.”

The Supreme Court earlier this year ruled that Louisiana needed to use a congressional map with two black-majority districts in the upcoming election. The three justices appointed by Democrats also dissented from that ruling.

In 2023, the nation’s top court struck down Alabama’s redrawn map, finding that it was racially discriminatory in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

Correction: an earlier version of this report misstated the president who appointed Justice Clarence Thomas. The Epoch Times regrets the error.