The US Supreme Court suggested it will reinstate a Republican-drawn congressional map in South Carolina, hearing arguments in a case that could help determine which party controls the House after next year‘s election.
In a session that lasted more than two hours, the conservative majority voiced skepticism about a lower court’s conclusion that lawmakers engaged in unconstitutional racial gerrymandering in drawing what is now a Republican-held district.
Chief Justice John Roberts said the South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, which sued to challenge the map, was relying on “circumstantial evidence” in making its case.
“I’m not saying you can’t get there, but it does seem that this would be breaking new ground in our voting rights jurisprudence,” Roberts said.
Republicans say they were motivated by politics, not race. The Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that voting maps can’t be challenged in federal court as excessively partisan.
The issues are different from those the justices resolved earlier this year when they said Alabama Republicans violated the Voting Rights Act with a congressional map that contained only one majority-Black district. The South Carolina fight concerns a separate line of Supreme Court cases that say the Constitution’s equal protection clause bars map drawers from making race the “predominant” factor.
A three-judge panel said that for South Carolina’s 1st District, lawmakers established a target of 17% Black voters, shifting 30,000 African Americans out of the district to hit the goal. The configuration left the GOP with a comfortable majority in the Charleston-based district, which elected Republican Nancy Mace in the last two elections.
The case is Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference, 22-807.
(Updates with details of arguments in third paragraph.)
