US Supreme Court scrutinizes South Carolina voting map deemed racially biased
By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday heard arguments in a bid by South Carolina officials to revive a Republican-drawn electoral map faulted by a lower court for moving 30,000 Black residents out of a congressional district — a case that could help decide control of the House of Representatives in the 2024 elections.
At issue is a map adopted last year by the Republican-led state legislature delineating the boundaries of one of South Carolina's seven U.S. House districts.
A panel of three federal judges blocked the map for South Carolina's coastal 1st congressional district, which includes parts of Charleston. The panel in January ruled that the map diminished the clout of Black voters in violation of the U.S. Constitution's 14th and 15th Amendments, which guarantee equal protection under the law and prohibit race-based voting discrimination, the judges found.
A practice called gerrymandering involves the manipulation of electoral district boundaries to marginalize a certain set of voters and increase the influence of others. In this case, the state legislature was accused of racial gerrymandering to reduce the influence of Black voters.
The Republican legislators and other state officials who have appealed to the Supreme Court have argued that the map was designed to secure partisan advantages, a practice that the Supreme Court in 2019 decided was not reviewable by federal courts — unlike racial gerrymandering, which remains illegal.
Some questions from the court's liberal justices signaled their skepticism toward that claim.
«Your defense was, 'We didn't look at the racial data for this purpose,' and what the (lower) court said was, 'I don't believe that,'» liberal Justice Elena
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