Conservative justices suggest South Carolina GOP gerrymandering was based on politics, not race

The Supreme Court’s conservatives expressed doubt at oral arguments Wednesday that South Carolina GOP lawmakers engaged in impermissible racial gerrymandering when they redrew congressional lines for a House seat to benefit Republicans.

The case is one of several racial and political gerrymandering-related lawsuits that could impact which party controls the House after next year’s congressional elections.

The district at issue was reworked in 2020 to benefit the GOP and current incumbent, Rep. Nancy Mace – one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust Kevin McCarthy as House speaker last week.

The South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and a Black voter named Taiwan Scott say the use of race dominated the decision-making process and that the state worked to intentionally dilute the power of Black voters. A federal court agreed, referring to the revised map as “bleaching.”

Several of the conservative justices on Wednesday suggested that map drawers had taken politics into consideration, not race.

Chief Justice John Roberts said those challenging the map had “no direct” evidence that race had predominated in the decisionmaking process. He said that there were no “odd-shaped” districts drawn and that there existed a “wealth of political data” that would justify the chosen boundaries. He said the challengers had only presented “circumstantial evidence” and suggested the court would be “breaking new ground” in its voting jurisprudence if it were to side with them.

Justice Samuel Alito repeatedly suggested that a lower court had made serious legal error in invalidating the map by relying upon erroneous expert testimony. He said the Supreme Court could not “rubber-stamp” the district court’s finding and he noted that the individual charged with drawing the maps had years of experience and had worked for…