by Katelynn Richardson
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday by a 6-3 vote that a lower court was “clearly wrong” in finding that South Carolina racially manipulated its congressional district map.
Majority held that “the circumstantial evidence largely fails to show that race, rather than partisan preferences, drove the districting process” underlying the creation of the map.
“First, the party challenging the constitutionality of the map must separate race and politics if it wants to prove that the Legislature was guided by race rather than partisanship,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion. “Secondly, when assessing the legislator’s work, we assume that the legislator acted in good faith.”
“In this case, which challenges South Carolina’s redistricting efforts in the wake of the 2020 census, the three-judge District Court only bluntly affirmed these proposals,” Alito continued, writing that the court’s factual findings were “clearly incorrect in the light of the relevant legal standards.”
Justice Elena Kagan, in a dissent joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote that the majority opinion “prohibits detachment and ignorance of the events and evidence crucial to this case.”
“Most choose evidence according to their own preferences; ignores or minimizes less convenient evidence; despises the panel’s assessment of the credibility of witnesses; and makes a number of errors in expert opinions,” Kagan wrote. “The majority professes to know better than the District Court what happened in the South Carolina map drawing room before District 1 was created.”
A three-judge panel that initially found the map had already been racially manipulated modified its March order allowing the map to be used in the 2024 elections due to the Supreme Court’s delay in considering the challenge.
“Ideal must move to practicality,” the panel concluded, citing the quickly approaching deadlines for the first season and the lack of a recent plan. Judges initially found that race was a “primary motivating factor” in January 2023 when lawmakers moved more than 30,000 Black residents from one district to another, finding that Congressional District 1 in the resulting map was racially gerrymandered, a violation 14th amendment.
Republican Rep. Nancy Mace won district in 2022 by nearly 14 points next redistricting.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a separate dissent to express his view that the court “does not have the authority to adjudicate these types of claims.”
“Drawing political districts is the job of politicians, not federal judges,” he wrote. “There are no judicially enforceable standards for resolving districting claims, and yet the Constitution entrusts these matters solely to political authorities.”
“The Court’s emphasis on resolving these claims has led it to develop doctrines that indulge in racial reasoning hostile to the Constitution,” Thomas continued.
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Katelynn Richardson is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation.
