(NewsWorthy.news) – The Supreme Court of the United States has sided with South Carolina’s Republicans in upholding a Republican-drawn congressional district.
The decision reversed a previous ruling by a lower court that the boundaries amounted to a racial gerrymander in violation of the constitution. The justices voted 6-3 along ideological lines to sign off the design that reinforces the Republican tilt of GOP Representative Nancy Mace’s district. The verdict helps Republicans with keeping the seat in the future, though the new map had already been implemented in advance of the 2024 election regardless of the verdict of the Supreme Court.
The conservative majority in the high court dismissed arguments that the design unacceptably moved roughly 30,000 black voters from the Charleston area to another district. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had claimed that the design pushed the legal limits of partisan gerrymandering regarding race by shuffling around black voters to secure the district as a Republican seat.
In February’s South Carolina primary, former President Donald Trump gave a controversial speech in which he suggested that black voters related to him as a victim of persecution because of his mugshot. Regardless of criticism from Democrats of the presumptive presidential nominee’s comments, Trump’s speech was reportedly well-received, and President Joe Biden is increasingly falling out of favor with the state’s black voters and backing Trump instead.
Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinion, said that the findings of the district court were “clearly erroneous.” The Supreme Court stated that, though race and politics closely correlate in the state, voters who challenged the new congressional boundaries provided no evidence of racial gerrymandering. The Republicans argued that they had not considered race, and that the design was purely partisan. Alito added that politics had interfered with the whole mapmaking process.
Chief Justice John Roberts argued that the claims of a racial gerrymander were based on circumstantial evidence, and that though it was possible to bring the claim based on such evidence, it would be an unprecedented move in voting rights jurisprudence.
Earlier in 2024 a panel of three federal judges, including one appointed by former President Barack Obama and another appointed by Biden, agreed with the claims that the boundary change was motivated by an attempt to “bleach” black voters out of the Charleston County region.
Copyright 2024, NewsWorthy.news
