Federal court orders South Carolina to redraw racially gerrymandered congressional maps

A portion of South Carolina’s Republican-drawn congressional map discriminates against Black voters and must be redrawn, federal judges ruled Friday to applause from civil rights groups.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for South Carolina in Columbia found that “race was the predominant motivating factor in the General Assembly’s design of Congressional District No. 1 and that traditional districting principles were subordinated to race.”

“Charleston County was racially gerrymandered and over 30,000 African-Americans were removed from their home district,” the judges added.

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed in December 2021 by the South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and voter Taiwan Scott, who are represented by the ACLU, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), the ACLU of South Carolina, Boroughs Bryant LLC, Arnold & Porter, and the General Counsel’s Office of the NAACP.

As LDF notes:

During an eight-day trial this past fall, plaintiffs highlighted how the South Carolina Legislature engineered its new map to cut through Black communities to suppress Black voting power—and demonstrated how lawmakers hid behind arbitrary justifications to achieve their discriminatory actions.

“The court got it right that plaintiffs, representing Black South Carolina voters, have a right to be free from unlawful racial discrimination under our constitution,” LDF deputy director of litigation Leah Aden said in a statement. “It is time for the South Carolina Legislature to adopt a fair and non-racially gerrymandered congressional map.”