Supreme Court Opens Door To South Carolina Reinstituting ‘Stark Racial Gerrymander’

WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 07: Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts (Photo by Jacquelyn Martin-Pool/Getty Images)
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a challenge brought by South Carolina Republican officials seeking to overturn a lower court ruling requiring them to redraw their “stark racial gerrymander” of a congressional district in the state. 

The First Congressional District had reliably elected a Republican for decades until Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-SC) flipped it in 2018 in an enormous upset. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) won it back in 2020, but only by about one point. 

Seeking to put the seat more reliably in their column, South Carolina Republicans cut more than 30,000 Black voters from the district during the decennial redistricting that was completed last year, enabling Mace to glide to reelection in 2022 by 14 points. Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), a powerful Democratic force in the deep red state, participated in the Republican overhaul to ensure that his district would be flooded with an influx of dependable Democratic votes, according to a ProPublica report.

A lower court panel, consisting of three Democrat-appointed federal judges, found the first district to be unconstitutionally contorted to virtually guarantee Republican control. 

The map drawing “ultimately exiled over 30,000 African American citizens from their previous district and created a stark racial gerrymander of Charleston County and the City of Charleston,” the panel wrote in its January decision. It ordered a redraw of the congressional district’s lines. 

The Supreme Court — which has done massive, historic damage to the legal safeguards that once blocked partisan and racial gerrymanders — taking up South Carolina officials’ challenge to that order does not bode well. 

The officials’ appeal to the Supreme Court presents such questions as “Did the district court err when it failed to disentangle race from politics?” and “Did the district court err when it failed to apply the presumption of good faith and to holistically analyze District 1 and the General Assembly’s intent?”

The preponderance of egregious gerrymanders and their accompanying disenfranchisement will endure as one of the Roberts Court’s greatest legacies. The right-wing majority seems poised to add another case to that distortion of American democracy. 

Latest News

Notable Replies

  1. FRIST!!! Roberts is no doubt proud of his legacy of disenfranchising huge numbers of POC, women, and Democrats. That has been his lifelong project. Gerrymandering the red states to the point of one party white hegemony is just the cherry on the top of that rancid sundae.

    ETA Obligatory cats.

  2. Such good, fine people on that Court.
    /s

  3. Proof that Lee Atwater was right, that you can’t just scream “n*gger, n*gger, n*gger” anymore. You have to use obscured ways to do the same thing.

  4. Republicans cut more than 30,000 Black voters from the district during the decennial redistricting that was completed last year, enabling Mace to glide to reelection in 2022 by 14 points.

    Will the Supreme Court say it’s perfectly legal for a political party to rig an election?

  5. Supreme Court (BS) justification…

    If gerrymandering were unpopular, the voters would vote out those who set up the gerrymander in the first place…

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

81 more replies

Participants

Avatar for lestatdelc Avatar for robg Avatar for jcs Avatar for mondfledermaus Avatar for brutus1910 Avatar for trnc Avatar for irasdad Avatar for bonvivant Avatar for gr Avatar for martinheldt Avatar for esva Avatar for darrtown Avatar for jonney_5 Avatar for nobiru Avatar for noonm Avatar for socalista Avatar for udubtec Avatar for txlawyer Avatar for rascal_crone Avatar for jlalbert Avatar for osprey Avatar for carpe_diem Avatar for Fire_Joni_Ernst Avatar for jientho

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: