The Supreme Court Monday agreed to decide whether South Carolina unconstitutionally discriminated against Black voters by cramming many of them into a single district.
The conservative-led top court will review a lower court ruling that lawmakers improperly redrew a Charleston-based district to reduce the number of Democratic-leaning Black voters in it.
The case likely will be argued in the fall, and should be decided in time for the 2024 elections, when all the seats in the House of Representatives will be on the ballot, including South Carolina’s seven seats.
Republicans hold a narrow nine-vote majority in the House, meaning Democrats and Republicans will be clawing for any advantage they can get.
The decision could also impact seats in a handful of other southern states where Republicans have sought to limit the number of districts that Democrats, who rely heavily on the support of Black voters in the region, have a realistic chance of winning.
Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, a moderate who has recently made headlines for her opposition to strict abortion bans, represents the district in question, which stretches along the Atlantic coast to Hilton Head.
She narrowly beat ex-Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham for the seat in 2020 after he had previously narrowly won the seat in 2018.
In the round of redistricting that took place following the 2020 census, majority Republicans in the South Carolina state house sought to shore up Mace’s support by shifting some Black areas into the neighboring district that is represented by Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn, the only Democrat in the state’s delegation.
The ploy worked and Mace won by 14% in last year’s midterm election.
Civil rights groups sued, labeling the plan the legislature adopted “perhaps the worst option of the available maps” for Black voters.
Republicans say their only goal was to maintain the 6-1 Republican edge in the state’s congressional districts, not racial animus.
A three-judge court ruled in January that the districts violated the federal Voting Rights Act by unfairly diluting the power of Black voters, who make up about 27% of the state’s registered voters.
The Supreme Court has previously ruled it will not check the power of state legislatures to gerrymander based on partisan politics.
It has also cut back on the reach of the landmark voting rights law, which had been a key tool to prevent southern states from drawing districts that benefit white candidates.