Supreme Court rules in South Carolina gerrymandering case

The U.S. Supreme Court has reversed a lower court decision that had struck down a South Carolina congressional district as a racial gerrymander.
Patrick Semansky/AP hide caption

toggle caption Patrick Semansky/AP

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 vote along ideological lines, reversed a lower court decision that had struck down a South Carolina congressional district as a racial gerrymander.

At issue was the way the Republican-controlled state legislature drew new congressional maps after the decennial Census. The case is particularly important because race and partisanship so often overlap, especially in racially polarized states like South Carolina. And while the court ruled in 2019 that partisan gerrymanders do not violate the Constitution, the justices have also ruled that racial gerrymanders do.

Specifically at issue in the case was the way the GOP legislature evened out the population between Congressional District 1, CD 1, which encompassed Charleston County and had 88,000 too many voters, and neighboring CD 6, represented by the state's only Black congressman, which had too few voters. Now, you might think that the easy solution would be to move the excess voters from CD 1 to CD 6. Instead, though, the GOP plan chopped up Charleston County, stripping from CD 1 much of the city of Charleston and ending its 120-year history as the anchor for the district.

The NAACP promptly challenged the GOP redistricting, and a three-judge district court, after an eight-day trial, ultimately concluded that the GOP plan was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander that targeted Black voters in order to achieve a safer Republican district.

This story will be updated.