Supreme Court throws out race claim in South Carolina redistricting case in win for GOP

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that Republicans in South Carolina did not unlawfully consider race when they drew a congressional district in a way that removed thousands of Black voters, in a decision that makes it harder for civil rights plaintiffs to bring racial gerrymandering claims.

The court, divided 6-3 on ideological lines with conservatives in the majority, said civil rights groups had not done enough to show that legislators were focused on race in drawing the Charleston-area district currently represented by Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican.

While the Supreme Court was considering the case, much more slowly than expected, the lower court that had invalidated the map said it could be used for this year’s election.

The justices' ruling will therefore have no immediate impact in South Carolina, but it sets the rules of the road for future redistricting efforts. The decision will make it easier for maps to be drawn that disfavor Black voters as long as the map makers can show they are focusing on politics, not race.

In the South, Black voters tend to be Democrats, so it can be difficult to separate race from politics.

Leah Aden, a lawyer with the Legal Defense Fund civil rights group who argued the case at the Supreme Court for the plaintiffs, said the ruling is "disheartening not only for our case, but other cases" because the Supreme Court has now disavowed reliance on evidence it had previously said could be relied upon.

"The bar keeps on getting moved, and it keeps getting harder and harder for plaintiffs to uproot racial discrimination," she added.

The court sided with Republican state officials who said their sole goal was to increase the Republican tilt in the district.

South Carolina Senate President Thomas Alexander welcomed the ruling, saying that the redistricting plan was "meticulously crafted to comply with statutory and constitutional requirements."

As a result of the ruling, Mace's district will not have to be redrawn, delivering a blow to Democrats who hope to secure a more favorable map. Litigation on a separate claim brought by plaintiffs against the map could continue.

Writing for the majority, conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote that "no direct evidence" supports the lower court's finding that race was a key consideration when the map was drawn.

"The circumstantial evidence falls far short of showing that race, not partisan preferences, drove the districting process," he added.

Alito added that state legislators should be given the benefit of the doubt when facing claims that maps were drawn with discriminatory intent.

"We should not be quick to hurl such accusations at the political branches," he wrote.

In dissent, liberal Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the majority had "stacked the deck" against the challengers by saying that evidence about the impact on Black voters can easily be sidestepped if the state can offer an alternative narrative that insists voters were divvied up based on partisan interests.

"What a message to send to state legislators and mapmakers about racial gerrymandering," she added.

The message for politicians who "might want to straight-up suppress the electoral influence of minority voters" is: "Go right ahead," Kagan said.

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas agreed with Alito's conclusions, but in a separate opinion said he would go even further and find that courts have no role to play in reviewing constitutional challenges to voting districts.

"Drawing political districts is a task for politicians not federal judges," he wrote.

Rick Hasen, an expert on election law at UCLA School of Law, said the ruling, along with others on voting issues decided by the Supreme Court in recent years, "makes it significantly more difficult" for minority voters to win election-related cases.

In the South Carolina case, the Supreme Court was reviewing a January 2023 lower court ruling that said race was of predominant concern when one of the state's seven districts was drawn.

Republicans redrew the boundaries after the 2020 census to strengthen GOP control of what had become a competitive district.

Democrat Joe Cunningham won the seat in 2018 and narrowly lost to Mace in 2020. Two years later, with a new map in place, Mace won by a wider margin.

The roughly 30,000 Black voters who were moved out of the district were placed into the district held by Democratic Rep. James Clyburn, who is Black. It is the only one of the seven congressional districts in South Carolina that is held by Democrats.

Civil rights groups alleged not only that Republicans unlawfully considered race when they drew the maps but that they also diluted the power of Black voters in doing so. It is the latter claim that remains unresolved, with plaintiffs' lawyers saying on Thursday they are not yet sure how they will proceed.

The racial gerrymandering claim was brought under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which requires that the law applies equally to everyone. The case arose under a different legal theory from the major ruling last year in which civil rights advocates successfully challenged Republican-drawn maps in Alabama under the Voting Rights Act.

It was already difficult to challenge legislative district maps even before Thursday's ruling, and not just on race-based grounds.

In a 2019 case on a related issue, the Supreme Court made it impossible for plaintiffs to challenge districts in federal court as partisan gerrymanders drawn to entrench the political power of incumbent politicians. Congress could potentially enact legislation that would impose rules on redistricting, but with Republicans opposed it is likely to happen any time soon.