Supreme Court skeptical of South Carolina racial gerrymandering claims in Mace’s district

The Supreme Court raised concerns during oral arguments Wednesday that a civil rights group had no direct evidence that racial discrimination occurred in South Carolina’s recent redistricting process, signaling the court could overturn a lower court’s decision that had favored the group.

The skepticism from the justices came as they listened to arguments in Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP over whether the state legislature acted illegally when it moved 30,000 black voters from Charleston out of the state’s First Congressional District.

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The district is represented by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who narrowly edged out her opponent in 2020 but won by a more commanding margin in 2022 after her district’s lines had been redrawn.

The case is different than a recent decision the court made in Alabama that the state violated the Voting Rights Act through gerrymandering. At issue in South Carolina is not the VRA but rather a claim that the legislature veered outside the state constitution’s discrimination safeguards.

“We have said that the burden that you’re assuming of disentangling race and politics in a situation like this is very, very difficult, but it is your burden, right?” Chief Justice John Roberts asked Leah Aden, who appeared on behalf of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.

“Yes, your honor,” Aden replied.

“And you’re trying to carry [that burden] without any direct evidence, with no alternative map, with no odd-shaped districts, which we often get in gerrymandering cases, and with a wealth of political data that you’re suggesting your friends on the other side would ignore in favor of racial data?” Roberts asked.

The chief justice later added that he had never had a case on voting rights rely purely on circumstantial evidence while up against a large amount of hard political evidence to support the state’s gerrymandering decision.

Circumstantial evidence falls “peculiarly in the province of the states in drawing the districts,” Roberts said, noting that relying on it “would be breaking new ground in our voting rights jurisprudence.”

Other Republican-appointed justices, including Justice Samuel Alito, raised similar points after Aden leaned heavily on experts as evidence, rather than the evidence Roberts had specified.

“In a case that’s all about disentangling race and politics, how can we possibly give any weight to an expert report that did not take politics into account?” Alito asked at one point.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson showed openness to using only circumstantial evidence, saying, “The extent that this distinction is turning on whether or not there’s direct evidence, I wonder if it is reasonable to require such evidence or say that such evidence would exist.”

Jackson added, “In a situation like this … where the state is saying, ‘Instead we are trying to achieve a partisan tilt’ … we’ve also said its intent to use race is a very hard thing to prove just on its own, are you asking that we have a smoking gun in a situation like this?”

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The Supreme Court is expected to decide the case before next year’s election and its decision is expected to affect Mace’s reelection prospects.

Former Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-SC) flipped the historically red district in 2018, signaling it had become a competitive battleground. Mace defeated Cunningham in 2020 by about one percent, but she won more handily in 2022 after the new map went into effect.