WASHINGTON (CN) — Republican lawmakers in South Carolina faced a receptive audience at the Supreme Court on Wednesday as the conservative majority expressed skepticism that race overshadowed politics when creating a new congressional map.
“This whole case is about disentangling race and politics,” Justice Samuel Alito said.
The Bush appointee was a standout in his support for South Carolina’s arguments, taking issue with experts the lower courts relied on to throw out the state’s 2021 map for racial gerrymandering. Alito noted that when race and politics are so closely aligned, it is not surprising that lawmakers’ sorting of voters by party could look similar to racial divisions.
Chief Justice John Roberts also made it clear he thought the lower court erred in its judgment, critiquing the ruling for not using more evidence to prove lawmakers unlawfully used race when drawing congressional districts.
The liberal justices strongly disagreed, sometimes directly countering their colleagues on the bench. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson questioned Alito’s focus on the lower court’s evaluation of expert testimony.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor also tried to steer the high court’s inquiry toward reviewing the legal standard before them instead of doubling back on work the lower court already completed. The Obama appointee countered Roberts’ questions, seeming to think additional calls for evidence were unnecessary.
“You don’t need a smoking gun,” Sotomayor said.
South Carolina’s Legislature redrew new congressional maps following the 2020 census. Their changes to the state’s 1st District and 6th District were challenged by civil rights groups who claim lawmakers intentionally diluted the votes of Black residents.
The 1st District is solidly red, tracing the state’s coast. In contrast, the 6th District — the only majority Black congressional district — sits in the middle of the state and is represented by the prominent Democratic Representative James Clyburn.
The Legislature’s redistricting effort moved 193,000 people between these two districts. The 1st District was already overpopulated; however, lawmakers decided to add 53,000 people from the 6th District. Then, legislators moved 140,000 people from the 1st District to the 6th District.
Civil rights groups argue lawmakers should have simplified the process and just moved 85,000 people from the 1st District to the 6th District. They argue the Legislature chose not to do this because lawmakers knew they needed to maintain the 1st District’s Black voting population to give Republicans an advantage.
Black South Carolinians are known to vote in a bloc, and knowing this, civil rights groups say, led lawmakers to use Black voters to give themselves an advantage.
Lawmakers argue they used electoral data to give Republicans an advantage. Although the civil rights groups claim the result appears like a racial gerrymander, the Legislature argues it was purely partisan in nature.
South Carolina wants the justices to reverse the lower court ruling, arguing that finding its map unconstitutional was an error. The lawmakers argue that race and politics are closely linked, so although it may look like they used race, they really relied on election data.
“The legislature used political data to achieve political goals,” John Gore, an attorney with Jones Day representing the lawmakers, said.
Justice Elena Kagan noted that the election data reviewed by the Legislature’s mapmaker would not have been enough information to create these maps. Kagan said the mapmaker only looked at one presidential election year — which Kagan said was especially unreliable because it was a year former President Donald Trump ran.
Civil rights groups who brought the challenge to South Carolina’s maps say the Legislature took advantage of the close link of politics and race in the state, using Black voters.
“The Legislature used race as a means to achieve a political goal,” Leah Aden, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said.
Both parties have asked the high court to rule on the case by January to account for upcoming elections.
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