US Supreme Court takes up bid to revive South Carolina voting map deemed racially biased
2023.05.15 09:53
© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: People walk across the plaza of the U.S. Supreme Court building on the first day of the court’s new term in Washington, U.S. October 3, 2022. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo
By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a bid by South Carolina officials to revive a Republican-crafted voting map that a lower court said had unconstitutionally “exiled” 30,000 Black voters from a closely contested congressional district.
The justices took up an appeal by South Carolina officials of a federal judicial panel’s ruling that found the Republican-drawn map had deliberately split up Black neighborhoods in Charleston County in a “stark racial gerrymander” and ordered the U.S. House of Representatives district to be redrawn.
Gerrymandering is a practice involving the manipulation of electoral district boundaries to marginalize a certain set of voters and increase the influence of others. In this case, the Republican legislators were accused of racial gerrymandering to reduce the influence of black voters.
Legislative districts across the country are redrawn to reflect population changes documented in the nationwide census conducted by the federal government every decade. South Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature adopted a new voting map last year following the 2020 U.S. census.
The map set new boundaries for the state’s 1st congressional district, which for almost four decades had consistently elected a Republican to the House until 2018, when a Democrat was elected in what was widely seen as an upset victory. In 2020, Republican Nancy Mace won the district by just over 1 percentage point.
In redrawing the district last year, Republicans moved more than 30,000 Black residents in Charleston County to the neighboring majority-Black 6th congressional district, which for more than 30 years has been represented by Representative James Clyburn, a Black Democratic legislator.
The Republican map resulted in a 1st congressional district with a larger percentage of white, Republican-leaning voters. Mace, who is white, coasted to re-election last November under the district’s new configuration, winning by 14 percentage points.
