The Supreme Court returns to the intersection of race and congressional representation on Wednesday 11 October, as the justice consider whether South Carolina illegally used race to redraw district lines for a House seat to benefit Republicans.
The case is one of several racial and political gerrymandering-related lawsuits that could effect which party controls the House after next year’s congressional elections. The district was reworked in 2020 to benefit the GOP and current incumbent, Rep. Nancy Mace – one of the eight Republicans who voted to Kevin McCarthy as House speaker last week.
The South Carolina State Conference of the( National Association for the Advancementof Coloured People) 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.”
The dispute comes as the justices this year ordered Alabama to redraw its congressional map to account for the states’ 27% Black voting population. That decision, penned by Chief Justice John Roberts, came as a welcome relief to liberals who feared that the court was poised to make it harder for minorities to challenge maps under Section 2 of the historic Voting Rights Act. A federal court approved a new map last week that significantly boosts the Black population in a second district, which could lead to the pickup of a Democratic seat next year.
