The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that South Carolina Republicans did not engage in racial harassment in the redrawing of the state's 1st Congressional District map, overturning a lower South Carolina District Court ruling.
In a 6-3 decision, the court's conservative majority, made up of Justices Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, said they saw no evidence that the state legislature controlled by Republicans was motivated by racial bias when it removed 30,000 mostly Black residents from the 1st District — currently held by Republican Rep. Nancy Mace.
Justice Samuel Alito, currently facing scrutiny for his own alleged partisan leanings, wrote for the majority that “because of the close correlation between race and partisan preferences, this fact does little to show that race rather than politics led the legislator's choice”.
“The District Court cited no evidence that could not also support a conclusion that politics drove the mapmaking process and provided no explanation why a cartographer who wanted to produce a reliably Republican version of District 1 would use data about with voters' race rather than their political preferences,” he added.
The result was surprising considering that in two recent cases, the court ruled that Alabama and Louisiana had been involved in racist manipulations. South Carolina's lower court had ruled that lawmakers had treated the 1st district “in a fundamentally different way than the rest of the state.”
“The strategies [South Carolina Senate Cartographer Will Roberts] He employed eventually exiled more than 30,000 African-American citizens from their former district and created an intense racial strife in Charleston County and the city of Charleston. As Mr. Roberts admitted during the Court's questioning, the changes he implemented in Charleston County were “dramatic” and “created a huge disparity” in the placement of African-Americans in Congressional Districts. the lower court wrote.
In a concurring opinion, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — another staunch conservative facing ethical questions about his relationships with prominent Republican donors — wrote that the Supreme Court should stop litigating racial harassment claims.
“In my view, the Court has no jurisdiction to decide such claims. Drawing political districts is the task of politicians, not federal judges. There are no judicially manageable standards for resolving districting claims, and regardless, the Constitution confines these issues exclusively to the political branches,” Thomas wrote.
“The Court's insistence on hearing these claims has led it to develop doctrines that indulge in unconstitutional racial reasoning,” he added.
from our partners at https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/supreme-court-rules-south-carolina-gop-racial-gerrymandering-1235026490/
