Supreme Court Upholds Racial Gerrymander in South Carolina
The justices also increased the burden for plaintiffs bringing claims to address racial discrimination in mapmaking.
The U.S. Supreme Court today made a significant ruling that will determine the future of both partisan and racial gerrymandering cases brought in the federal courts. In Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, the justices overturned a lower court ruling in a 6-3 decision and will allow the state’s congressional districts to remain the same.
The breakdown of the decision fell along the Supreme Court’s typical ideological lines - with the six conservative justices in the majority and the three liberal justices dissenting. In an opinion authored by Justice Samuel Alito, the majority stated that politics and not race was the predominant factor in the South Carolina legislature’s decision to gerrymander the 1st District. This is a striking reversal of the lower district court’s determination following a fact-finding judicial process. That’s a departure from the longstanding norm of deference towards findings of fact by trial courts.
This was the first case the Supreme Court has taken up in which ambiguity over racial and partisan gerrymandering was at issue. The plaintiffs argued that South Carolina violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment by racially gerrymandering Black voters out of the 1st District. Meanwhile, the defendants argued that the voters were moved out of the district due to their political party affiliation. In previous rulings, the Supreme Court said that federal courts have no jurisdiction in hearing cases of partisan gerrymandering. However, they remain the arbiters of racial discrimination when it comes to representation under these district lines.
In the South, voting patterns heavily fall along racial lines with Black voters overwhelmingly preferring Democrats and White voters favoring Republicans. However, Alito has now laid out increased burdens on plaintiffs to prove claims of illegal racial gerrymandering. Courts must now assume that legislators who draw the maps operate under the “presumption of good faith.” Moreover, absent “smoking gun” evidence of intentional discrimination, plaintiffs must now additionally produce alternative maps showing how mapmakers could achieve their partisan goals without illegally relying on race.
The case in South Carolina is just one throughout the South to contest the district lines. In recent years, federal courts have ordered the creation of new majority-Black districts in Louisiana, Georgia and Alabama. Several cases with similar claims remain pending in both state and federal courts - though no new lines will be drawn before the 2024 general election. The new standards laid out by the Supreme Court today will further restrict plaintiffs’ ability to address racial discrimination in congressional districts.
South Carolina’s 1st District is a coastal seat based in the southern portion of the state. The current lines cover all of Beaufort and Berkeley Counties as well as parts of Charleston, Colleton, Dorchester and Jasper Counties. The litigation was brought over how Charleston County was broken up during the 2021 round of redistricting. Black voters from the cities of Charleston and North Charleston were drawn out of the 1st District and into the already majority-Black 6th District. That resulted in a competitive district in 2018 and 2020 becoming a favorable Republican district in 2022.
The U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina originally ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in January 2023. The court ordered the South Carolina legislature to redraw the maps by March 31, 2023. Instead, the decision was appealed all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Oral arguments occurred on October 11, 2023.
Both the plaintiffs and defendants agreed that a decision needed to be made by January 1, 2024 in order to implement new districts for the 2024 elections should they be ordered to do so. Instead, the Supreme Court waited over seven months before issuing its opinion. The lower courts recently ruled that South Carolina could continue using its current maps despite being deemed unconstitutional. With the Supreme Court finally releasing its decision today, the congressional delegation in South Carolina will continue to favor Republicans as a result of the justices putting their thumbs on the scales of political power.