Supreme Court to weigh South Carolina plan that ‘exiled’ Black voters

A lower court said the redrawn district amounted to racial gerrymandering that helped a Republican beat a Democrat​

A three-judge panel in January said the plan by the Republican-led legislature split Black neighborhoods in the Charleston area to create a “stark racial gerrymander.” After the changes, Rep. Nancy Mace (R) coasted to victory over a Democratic opponent, securing what has become a Republican-dominated 6-to-1 congressional delegation in the state.

The judges found that South Carolina’s mapmaker tried to keep the African American population below a certain target in the district, treating Charleston County “in a fundamentally different way than the rest of the state.”

After the panel rejected the map, South Carolina asked the Supreme Court to step in, saying that maintaining Republican dominance was the reason for the changes, not race. ['Oh, we certainly were gerrymandering, but it wasn't racist.']

The justices are separately considering a case that challenges a lower court’s decision that Alabama must create a second congressional district, out of seven, in which an African American candidate would have a good chance of being elected. The charge there is that the Voting Rights Act is violated when minority voters are packed into one districtand then spread in small numbers among other districts so that their voting power is diluted.

Supreme Court seems skeptical of finding that South Carolina congressional district was racial gerrymander​

The Supreme Court's conservative majority expressed skepticism Wednesday with a lower court's finding that a congressional district in South Carolina was racially gerrymandered in violation of the Constitution as it weighed a case thattested the disentangling of racial and political motivations for drawing voting lines.

The justices spent much of the two-hour argument session questioning the validity of testimony by experts who appeared before a three-judge district court panel in October 2022. The justices debated why, after the Supreme Court effectively said partisan gerrymandering is permissible, mapmakers would have to impermissibly rely on race even if its used as a proxy for politics.

SCOTUS is too slow, so we'll have to use the gerrymandered districts anyway.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Having found that Congressional District No. 1 constitutes an unconstitutional racial
gerrymander, the Court fully recognizes that "it would be the unusual case in which a court would
be justified in not taking appropriate action to insure that no further elections are conducted under
an invalid plan." Reynolds v. Simms, 377 U.S. 533, 585 (1964). But with the primary election
procedures rapidly approaching, the appeal before the Supreme Court still pending, and no
remedial plan in place, the ideal must bend to the practical

Supreme Court approves South Carolina congressional map previously found to dilute Black voting power​

The Supreme Court upheld a pro-Republican South Carolina congressional map Thursday, rejecting the argument raised by civil rights groups that lawmakers impermissibly used race as a proxy to bolster the GOP’s chances.

But the high court also said that the civil rights groups that challenged the maps could continue to pursue one part of their claim, a move that will likely delay the battle over the districts for months.

“The dispute between the Democratic and Republican appointees in this case is a technical one, but one with massive legal consequences,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law. “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 Clarence Thomas wrote a concurrence questioning whether federal courts should be policing racial gerrymanders in the first place.

You can't find racial bias if you don't bother to look. /taps head