(Rightallegiance.com) – The Supreme Court decided on Thursday to keep a South Carolina congressional map that favors Republicans. Civil rights groups argued that lawmakers used race to help the GOP, but the court disagreed.
However, the court said that civil rights groups could continue to pursue part of their claim, which might delay the final decision on the districts for several months. A federal court had already decided in March that South Carolina could use the contested map in this year’s election.
The Supreme Court’s decision was 6-3, with conservative justices in the majority.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion, “The circumstantial evidence falls far short of showing that race, not partisan preferences, drove the districting process, and none of the expert reports offered by the Challengers provides any significant support for their position.”
The Supreme Court has said before that it won’t review maps designed to give one party an advantage over the other. However, mapmakers can’t mainly use race when they create these advantages. The challenge is that race and party affiliation can sometimes be linked, making it hard to separate the two.
CNN Supreme Court analyst Steve Vladeck commented, “The dispute between the Democratic and Republican appointees in this case is a technical one, but one with massive legal consequences. Here, the conservative justices effectively substituted their judgment about what actually happened for that of the district court – which could have consequences far beyond the specific context of racial gerrymandering cases.”
Justice Kagan’s Dissent
Liberal Justice Elena Kagan wrote a lengthy dissent joined by the other two liberal justices. She argued that the majority decision would encourage state lawmakers to use race to achieve partisan goals.
“Go right ahead, this Court says to States today. Go ahead, though you have no recognized justification for using race, such as to comply with statutes ensuring equal voting rights,” Kagan wrote. “Go ahead, though you are (at best) using race as a short-cut to bring about partisan gains – to elect more Republicans in one case, more Democrats in another.”
She continued, “In the electoral sphere especially, where ‘ugly patterns of pervasive racial discrimination’ have so long governed, we should demand better – of ourselves, of our political representatives, and most of all of this Court.”
Justice Thomas’s Concurrence
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a separate opinion questioning whether federal courts should be involved in reviewing racial gerrymandering cases at all. He suggested that the task of drawing political districts should be left to politicians, not federal judges.
“In my view, the Court has no power to decide these types of claims,” Thomas wrote. “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.”
Thomas referred to a 2019 Supreme Court ruling that ended federal judicial review of partisan gerrymanders and suggested that the same logic should apply to racial gerrymandering cases.
Implications for Future Elections
The fight over South Carolina’s maps is just one of several major redistricting cases that have reached the Supreme Court after the 2020 census. These cases involve redrawing congressional districts to reflect population changes. Last year, a 5-4 majority ordered Alabama to redraw its congressional map, and a similar case from Louisiana is still pending.
Currently, Republicans have a very slim majority in the US House of Representatives. The outcomes of these redistricting cases could impact which party controls the House next year. For example, new maps in Alabama could benefit Democrats, while new maps in Georgia and North Carolina could help Republicans.
In South Carolina, the disputed district was drawn in 2020 to favor Republicans. The NAACP South Carolina State Conference and a Black voter, Taiwan Scott, claimed that race was the main factor in drawing the map, which diluted Black voters’ power. A federal court agreed and called the revised map a “bleaching.”
Although Republicans have consistently won the coastal district from 1980 to 2016, a Democrat won in 2018 in a surprising victory. In 2020, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace won the seat in a close race. When state lawmakers started working on new congressional maps in 2021, the Republican majority aimed to strengthen the GOP’s position in the district. Currently, Republicans hold six of the state’s seven districts.
After an eight-day trial with 42 witnesses and 652 exhibits, a three-judge district court panel last year ruled that the South Carolina map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because race was the main factor in redistricting.
South Carolina Republicans, led by state Senate President Thomas Alexander, appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the maps were drawn with political, not racial, considerations in mind.
A key issue in the case was why the plaintiffs didn’t provide an alternative map to show that the new districts could achieve the same partisan goals without significantly impacting race.
Justice Alito wrote, “We have repeatedly observed that an alternative map of this sort can go a long way toward helping plaintiffs disentangle race and politics. An alternative map can perform the critical task of distinguishing between racial and political motivations when race and partisanship are closely entwined.”