The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that a South Carolina congressional map accused of racial gerrymandering can stand, reversing a district court decision that struck down the lines for Rep. Nancy Mace‘s (R-SC) district.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the 6-3 decision in Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, finding that South Carolina’s Congressional District 1 did not violate the Constitution when the state’s Republican-controlled legislature enacted the map to ensure the district remained safe for Republicans. The ruling creates a higher bar for determining when a map can be considered a racial gerrymander, rather than a partisan gerrymander.
The high court’s previous precedent found that the Constitution bars racial gerrymandering but that federal courts can’t police partisan gerrymandering. Alito wrote that the high court has navigated the tension that results when there is a high correlation between race and partisan preference “by endorsing two related propositions.”
First, he wrote that the party challenging the constitutionality of the map must “disentangle race and politics if it wishes to prove that the legislature was motivated by race as opposed to partisanship.” He added that “we stand with a presumption that the legislature acted in good faith.”
In January, federal judges ordered South Carolina lawmakers to redraw the congressional map, ruling the coastal 1st District was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander that diminished black voters’ influence under the Constitution’s 14th and 15th amendments.
Alito’s decision was joined by all Republican-appointed members of the court: Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.
Justice Elena Kagan dissented from the majority and was joined by fellow Democratic-appointed Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“What a message to send to state legislators and mapmakers about racial gerrymandering,” Kagan wrote, adding that the majority got it “seriously wrong.”
“Go right ahead, this Court says to States today. Go ahead, though you have no recognized justification for using race, such as to comply with statutes ensuring equal voting rights. Go ahead, though you are (at best) using race as a short-cut to bring about partisan gains — to elect more Republicans in one case, more Democrats in another,” Kagan wrote.
Thomas wrote a separate concurrence in which he agreed with the majority’s findings but said courts should not be tasked with deciding constitutional claims over voting lines.
“Drawing political districts is a task for politicians, not federal judges,” Thomas wrote.
Thursday’s decision came after the 6-3 Republican-appointed majority last month handed a victory to black voters in Louisiana by blocking a lower court that could have lowered the number of majority-black congressional districts in the state from two to one. However, the Supreme Court’s order in that case affects only the 2024 election, meaning the justices could revisit the case for the 2026 midterms.
The Supreme Court held arguments in the case on Oct. 11 but held out on releasing a decision until Thursday.
The delay prompted the federal district court that ruled the Charleston-area district was racially gerrymandered to order that very map to be used in the 2024 election.
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The lower court order saved Mace from heading into the November election with an alternative map that may have been more favorable to Democrats, but the upshot of the Supreme Court’s decision likely makes District 1 safer for Republicans in future elections, and more broadly shields state legislatures from lawsuits alleging racial gerrymanders.
When Mace first won election in 2020, she beat Democratic incumbent Rep. Joe Cunningham by under 5,400 votes. In 2022, after redistricting driven by census results, she won reelection by 14%.
