Supreme Court upholds South Carolina election maps that allegedly weakened Black voters
A South Carolina district, which Rep. Nancy Mace (R) represents, will remain the same, despite claims that it was racially gerrymandered.
In a 6-3 ideological decision Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court conservatives voted to reverse the lower court decision that struck down the seat.
Unlike the Alabama case, the South Carolina case didn't claim that The Voting Rights Act was violated.
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Justice Samuel Alito, who was outed for flying flags associated with the January 6th "Stop the Steal" movement, complained federal courts should not be used for "partisan warfare."
University of Michigan Law School assistant professor Leah Litman explained to MSNBC that the issue began when districts were revealed to have been underpopulated, based on the 2020 census. Instead of moving voters from overpopulated areas to underpopulated ones, South Carolina simply readjusted all of the districts in the state.
The end result of this was a dilution in the concentration of Black voters across all districts.
"Here South Carolina's chapter of the NAACP had alleged that South Carolina's legislature had intentionally relied on race as the basis for constructing the legislative districts they did," explained Litman. "The legal standards in the two cases were quite different. One established vote dilution, which doesn't cause the chamber to show that the legislature tried to reduce — the lower trial court had concluded based on the evidence that the legislature had intentionally disadvantaged Black voters."
She added in a comment on X that "Sam Alito, who flew flags symbolizing election denialism and insurrection, allows South Carolina to adopt a map that advantages GOP at the expense of Black voters - by ensuring that the [percentage] of Black voters in certain districts (Nancy Mace's) would remain low enough for districts to remain GOP."
See her full explainer below or at the link here.
Supreme Court conservatives uphold racial gerrymandering youtu.be