Is SC’s 1st District racially gerrymandered? US Supreme Court weighs arguments

Conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court appeared skeptical of a racial gerrymandering case brought forward by South Carolina’s NAACP over how the state’s 1st Congressional District map is drawn.

The future of whether the district needs to be redrawn is in the hands of the high court, which heard arguments Wednesday over whether the district was unlawfully drawn during the 2021 redistricting process.

At the heart of the case is whether lawmakers intentionally packed Black voters into the 6th Congressional District, currently represented by U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-Santee. In the redistricting process, lawmakers moved Black voters out of the coastal 1st Congressional District, represented by U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-Isle of Palms.

When drawing the congressional map, the Republican-controlled state Legislature said it used partisan demographics to determine where to draw the lines, not the racial makeup of the regions.

However, because Black voters make up most of the Democratic voting base in the Palmetto State, the South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP said the state’s congressional map unfairly diluted the Black vote by making the state’s 1st Congressional District more likely to vote Republican as opposed to being a swing-district.

“We are confident that after a full review of the record, the Supreme Court will agree with the panel’s ruling because the law and facts are on plaintiffs’ side. South Carolina’s Congressional District 1, anchored in Charleston County, is a blatant example of racially discriminatory redistricting,” Leah Aden, the attorney representing the NAACP in the case, said after the hearing.

Aden argued that race was in the mind of mapmakers when putting together the congressional map.

“At the heart of this, they served their purpose by focusing on the the precincts with the highest (Black voting age population), leaving alone white precincts within Charleston and moving out Black precincts,” Aden said during the hearing.

Chief Justice John Roberts said the case brought by the NAACP is purely based on circumstantial evidence, while the state has provided a “great volume of political evidence” in defense of the map’s legitimacy.

“You’re trying to to carry it without any direct evidence, with no alternative map, with no odd-shaped districts, which we often get in gerrymandering cases, and with a wealth of political data that you’re suggesting your friends on the other side would ignore in favor of racial data,” Roberts said to Aden.

However, assistant U.S. Solicitor Catherine Flynn said other maps were proposed during the legislative mapmaking process, including by S.C. State House staff and one from state Sen. Ronnie Sabb, D-Williamsburg, that would have met Republican goals.

“There were maps that remained Republican-leaning that were rejected. And instead, there was this unusual movement in and out based on race,” Associate Justice Sonya Sotomayor said. “That’s what the experts show that you can’t explain the movements based on partisanship, that they can only be explained on the basis of race.”

The Supreme Court has said that race can’t be used as a proxy reason to achieve a political goal.

“If you can’t reach a goal, no matter how laudatory it is, if the only way that you can satisfy yourself, for whatever your political reasons are, is by using race, that’s illegal,” Sotomayor said.

The NAACP sued the state over the congressional maps, and a federal three-judge panel in January ruled the coastal district is an unlawful racial gerrymander that discriminates against Black voters in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

The state then appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Although arguments were heard Wednesday, both parties in the case have asked the justices to rule by Jan. 1 because of next year’s elections. If the Supreme Court ruled the congressional map needs to be redrawn, this would add to state lawmakers’ plate to address the issue during the upcoming session.

The South Carolina case follows a ruling on the Alabama congressional maps in which the Supreme Court said mapmakers needed to draw a second district where Black voters could elect a representative of their choosing, instead of just one majority-Black district. Federal judges have since chosen a congressional map for the state that includes a second district where Black voters make up a substantial portion of the voting population, according to CBS News.

Attorney John Gore, who is representing South Carolina in its gerrymandering case, argued that the only alternative maps for the state would have produced a majority-Democratic 1st District and not one with a Republican tilt.

“Mere awareness of race does not prove racial predominance,” Gore said. “The question here is whether race was used to draw lines in a predominant manner. That did not happen on this record.”

Gore also argued that when the lines were drawn, state Sen. Chip Campsen, R-Charleston, wanted to make sure Charleston County had two U.S. representatives representing the county, which meant extending the 6th District, represented by the influential Clyburn, into Charleston County.

“What Sen. Campsen explained is that Joe Biden wouldn’t be president if it weren’t for Congressman Clyburn, so of course, he wants Congressman Clyburn representing the interests of his home county of Charleston, but he also wanted to keep a Republican representative there, too, in case there’s a change in administration here in Washington,” Gore said.

Gore argued that the mapmakers’ use of only 2020 election data was the most accurate way to determine political voting trends because absentee ballot data was specific to the precinct level, as opposed to just the county level.

Mapmakers did not use any other election year data.

“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),” said Associate Justice Samuel Alito.