COLUMBIA, SC (AP) — A federal appeals court has denied Republicans in South Carolina’s motion for a stay in the ongoing challenge to the state’s congressional district map.
Top GOP lawmakers will now take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to avoid redrawing the map that a three-judge federal panel ruled last month was unconstitutional as a racially discriminatory gerrymander.
Justices ruled in early January that the boundaries adopted last year by the Republican-dominated state legislature marked an intentional division of black voters in South Carolina’s 1st District, which stretches from Charleston to Hilton Head. Island.
The February 4 order postponed the date on which new cards can be presented. If the Supreme Court takes the case and upholds the federal panel’s decision, the state’s 1st Coastal District will not be redrawn until 30 days after the High Court’s final decision. The panel previously ordered lawmakers to submit new maps by the end of March.
Political control over the seat shifted in recent elections. In 2018, Joe Cunningham became the first Democrat from South Carolina to flip a U.S. House seat in 30 years. But Republican Nancy Mace beat Cunningham by just over 1 percentage point in the next cycle and won reelection last November by 14 percentage points under new district lines.
After the new cards were approved by Congress, civil rights groups quickly filed a lawsuit accusing the state legislature of choosing “perhaps the worst option of the cards available” for black voters.
The Jan. 6 ruling found that the mapmakers violated federal law by using race to further the partisan goal of making the 1st District safer for Republicans. The justices wrote that GOP legislative leaders pulled black voters out of the 1st District and lumped them into the 6th District — where Rep. Jim Clyburn, the only Democrat currently in the state’s congressional delegation, served for 30 years.
In a Jan. 27 motion to stay, attorneys for the state House, Senate, and state Elections Commission argued that the decision did not “dissociate race from politics.” The lawyers wrote that civil rights groups had failed to prove that race was the “predominant consideration” for mappers. Instead, the lawyers reiterated, the GOP-led General Assembly passed maps that sought to maintain the state’s 6-1 split between Republicans and Democrats and protect incumbents.
“(T)he adopted plan limits the ability of all Democrats – African American and white – to form a winning political coalition in District 1,” the attorneys wrote.
During the eight-day trial in late November 2022, lawyers from civil rights groups presented expert testimony whose data showed the cards were racially discriminatory. In a Feb. 3 filing opposing the stay motion, attorneys argued that the cards still treated black voters differently than white voters of the same political party.
Because the panel found that the basic voting rights of African Americans had been violated, the judges said they would not grant a stay – which would have lifted their ban on any new elections until the bill was passed. a new card.
“The Court has every hope and expectation that the appeals process can be completed and a recovery plan adopted before the 2024 primary and general elections,” the justices wrote. “However, in the event that the process is not completed in time for the 2024 primary and general election schedule, the election for Congressional Precinct No. is not in place.”
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James Pollard is a member of the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places reporters in local newsrooms to report on underreported issues.
James Pollard, l’Associated Press
