Supreme Court weighs South Carolina racial gerrymandering dispute

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared skeptical Wednesday that Republicans in South Carolina unlawfully considered race when they drew a congressional district in a way that removed thousands of Black voters.

Conservative justices, who hold a 6-3 majority, questioned whether civil rights groups that challenged the district had sufficient evidence to show that legislators were focused predominantly on race when they drew the map. The state says its sole goal was to increase the Republican tilt in the district.

With Black voters tending to vote for Democrats, the case raises the question of whether Republicans were targeting them primarily for racial or partisan reasons.

The case has the justices grappling with the impact of their own ruling from 2019 that effectively gave the green light to so-called partisan gerrymandering when it said federal courts have no role in assessing such claims.

Republicans led by South Carolina Senate President Thomas Alexander are contesting a January ruling that said race was of predominant concern when one of the seven districts was drawn.

The district, which includes the city and county of Charleston, is represented by Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican.

After the 2020 census, Republicans redrew the boundaries to strengthen GOP control of what had become a competitive district.

Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts said the plaintiffs’ case rested solely on “circumstantial evidence” and was, in that sense, different from other racial gerrymandering cases the court has decided.

“This would be breaking new ground in our voting rights jurisprudence,” he said of a decision against the state.

Fellow conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett likewise said the plaintiffs have an “exceedingly heavy burden” to show that the state acted inappropriately, with the court generally adopting the presumption that legislatures act in good faith.

Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch was among those who probed the difficulty of disentangling race from partisanship.

“Here there’s no evidence the Legislature could have achieved its partisan tilt, which everyone says is permissible in any other way,” he said.

Of all the conservatives, Justice Samuel Alito was most persistent in questioning the plaintiffs’ theory of the case, asking a series of questions digging into the facts and how the lower court reached its conclusions.

It is not the Supreme Court’s role to merely “rubber-stamp” the lower court’s findings, he said.

The court’s three liberal justices were more sympathetic to the plaintiffs, saying the Supreme Court should overturn the lower court only if grave errors were identified in its handling of the case.