Supreme Court says panel was wrong in ruling SC congressional map unconstitutional

In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court said a three-judge panel erred when ruling South Carolina’s -congressional map is unconstitutional.

The congressional map will be used in November’s election.

The South Carolina Conference of the NAACP said the map unlawfully diluted Black voting power in the state as Black voters were packed into the 6th Congressional District, a majority-minority district represented by U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-Santee, through a racial gerrymander.

But in the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote race and politics must be disentangled to prove the Legislature was motivated by race, and the trial judges must presume lawmakers acted in good faith.

“The three-judge District Court paid only lip service to these propositions,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion. “That misguided approach infected the District Court’s findings of fact, which were clearly erroneous under the appropriate legal standard. We therefore reverse the trial court in part and remand for further proceedings.”

In the ruling, the Supreme Court said the congressional map was not a racial gerrymander, but did remand the claim of voter dilution back to the lower court.

Alito was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Clarence Thomas concurred with the opinion.

Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s three liberal justices, dissented in the opinion.

“I commend today’s Supreme Court decision upholding South Carolina’s congressional redistricting plan,” state Senate President Thomas Alexander said in a statement. “As I have said throughout this process, our plan was meticulously crafted to comply with statutory and constitutional requirements, and I was completely confident we would prevail.”

U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-Santee, and the state’s highest ranking Black Democratic elected federal official, said the Supreme Court is choosing to disenfranchise Black voters

“Equitable representation is the hallmark of a healthy democracy and in this case, the Supreme Court is attempting to steer the country back to a dark place in our history,” Clyburn said.

Leah Aden, senior counsel at the Legal Defense Fund who argued before the Supreme Court, called the decision disgraceful in a call with reporters.

“The highest court in our land greenlit racial discrimination in South Carolina’s redistricting process, denied Black voters the right to be free from the race-based sorting and sent a message that facts, process, and precedent will not protect the Black vote,” Janai Nelson, president and director-counsel of the Legal Defense Fund said in a statement. “Today the voices of Black South Carolinians were muted, and if we are not careful the next set of votes denied could be those in your state.”

How the NAACP, ACLU and the Legal Defense Fund will continue the case is still to be determined, Aden said.

“We are still assessing what is next for us,” Aden said. “I think it is one bright line in an otherwise, very unfortunate and very wrong decision that the court did recognize that there are distinct claims and that there is a potential avenue for plaintiffs to try to redress the harm of the racially discriminatory map.”

State lawmakers say they drew the map with political considerations in mind hoping to make the 1st Congressional District a more Republican-leaning one, rather than a toss up Lowcountry district, represented by U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-Isle of Palms.

When creating the congressional map, lawmakers moved tens of thousands of residents from the 1st District to the 6th District.

Because race and political party preference are so intertwined in South Carolina, it is difficult to draw a map where partisan and racial demographics aren’t closely aligned, Alito said during October’s hearing.

A district in South Carolina that leans Democratic will have a high Black voting age population.

“If they are disregarding race entirely, and looking only at politics, where race and politics are so closely aligned, it isn’t surprising that when you want to get a district that has a certain Republican percentage, you’re going to get a district that has a steady (Black voting-age population),” Alito said during the October hearing.

The Supreme Court has ruled it is OK to draw a map using partisan leanings, but it’s not OK to gerrymander a map on a racial basis.

During the October hearing, the conservative justices, who make up a majority of the court, seemed skeptical of the NAACP’s arguments. The justices said the NAACP had not provided an alternative map that could have been considered. Justices also pointed out the South Carolina congressional map did not have oddly shaped districts.

“They provided no direct evidence of a racial gerrymander, and their circumstantial evidence is very weak,” Alito wrote in Thursday’s opinion. “Instead, the challengers relied on deeply flawed expert reports. And while these experts produced tens of thousands of maps with differently configured districts, they did not offer a single map that achieved the legislature’s partisan goal while including a higher (Black voting age population) in District 1. Faced with this record, we must reverse the District Court on the racial-gerrymandering claim.”

Kagan pointed out in her dissent that the state’s mapmakers were experienced and skilled in the use of racial data, and the state’s mapmaking software showed how any change affected racial composition.

“Faced with that proof, all three judges agreed: The Challengers’ version of events was the more credible,” Kagan wrote. “The court, to put the matter bluntly, did not believe the state officials. It thought they had gerrymandered District 1 by race.”

Allen Chaney, legal director for the ACLU of South Carolina, and Kagan in her dissent argued an alternative map was never a requirement in the case.

Chaney, in a call with reporters, said “it is almost impossible to provide an alternative map” because what target lawmakers had when drawing the districts did not disclose their targeted goal until the trial.

State Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, said that assertion would be false. While speaking to reporters at the State House, Massey said he made it clear during depositions before trial that political and partisan considerations were taken when drawing the map.

“It would have been political malpractice for us to sacrifice the 1st (Congressional District),” Massey said. “We were not going to pass a plan to sacrifice the First, but that was all about political calculations. And that was the case because those are the rules that the Supreme Court set out that we knew this is something that we could do, so that’s what we did.”

The case may continue in the lower court over whether Black-voting power was diluted with the map, as that claim was sent back by the Supreme Court.

“A plaintiff pressing a vote-dilution claim cannot prevail simply by showing that race played a predominant role in the districting process,” Alito wrote. “Rather, such a plaintiff must show that the State ‘enacted a particular voting scheme as a purposeful device to minimize or cancel out the voting potential of racial or ethnic minorities.’”