South Carolina GOP asks to use challenged election map as SCOTUS sits on ruling

WASHINGTON (CN) — Republican lawmakers from South Carolina told the Supreme Court Wednesday that the time to draw new congressional maps has passed. 

A three-judge panel on the Fourth Circuit barred the state in Jan. 2023 from holding elections under the current district lines in Republican Representative Nancy Mace’s district. Under the appeal court’s ruling, the state can neither use nor begin to redraw Mace’s district until the Supreme Court issues a ruling. 

The Supreme Court has been sitting on the appeal for over five months now, but has yet to decide if a lower court erred in finding the state’s current map is unconstitutional. 

While that timeline is not unusual for a consequential case on the court’s docket, it presents a conundrum for South Carolina’s quickly approaching election cycle. 

The lawmakers claim the Fourth Circuit’s pause has created uncertainty for the 2024 elections and asked the Supreme Court to block the ruling so the state can conduct elections under the challenged map. 

“The panel’s inaction at this late juncture has invited chaos and uncertainty into South Carolina’s congressional elections — all to the untenable result of ‘voter confusion, consequent incentive to remain away from the polls,’ and erosion of public ‘confidence in the integrity of [the state’s] electoral processes,’” John Gore, an attorney with Jones Day representing the lawmakers, wrote in North Carolina's emergency appeal.  “The court should grant a partial stay of the panel’s injunction to allow South Carolina’s 2024 Congressional elections to proceed under the General Assembly’s Enacted Plan and election calendar.” 

South Carolina’s Legislature moved around 200,000 people between the state’s 1st District and the 6th District following the 2020 census. Civil rights groups claimed lawmakers purposefully used race in arranging these districts to give Republicans an advantage. 

The new maps removed 62% of Black residents from Charleston County and eliminated every precinct but one with more than 1,000 Black voters. The Fourth Circuit panel determined the 1st District’s Black voting-age percentage was proof that legislators racially gerrymandered the county. 

South Carolina legislators reject that finding, however, arguing that they used politics instead of race to gerrymander the maps. They argued that changing the maps in any other way would have given Democrats an advantage. 

Lawmakers and civil rights groups asked the Supreme Court to decide if the maps were unconstitutional by January. So far the justices have given no indication that a decision in the case is imminent. 

Although Republican lawmakers place the blame on the appeals court — which said the maps were blocked until the Supreme Court rules — the justices' delay has left uncertainty around which election maps will be used in the 2024 elections. 

The Legislature said that it won’t need a stay if the court is going to rule in their favor, but even if the court affirms the Fourth Circuit’s ruling, lawmakers claim there is not enough time to draw and implement a new congressional district. 

Lawmakers’ emergency application asks the court to enter an administrative stay, set an expedited briefing schedule, and issue an order no later than March 25, which is one week before the candidate filing deadline. 

Follow @KelseyReichmann

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