SC’s new congressional map challenged as unconstitutional, racially discriminatory
South Carolina’s new congressional districts perpetuate the state’s “persistent legacy of discrimination against Black voters” in violation of the U.S. Constitution and must be redrawn, an amended lawsuit filed late Thursday charges.
The federal complaint, filed on behalf of the South Carolina chapter of the NAACP, alleges lawmakers used race as the primary factor in drawing the 1st, 2nd and 5th congressional districts in order to dilute the voting strength of Black South Carolinians in those districts and maintain political power.
“The recently adopted congressional map denies Black South Carolinians political representation at the federal level,” South Carolina NAACP president Brenda Murphy said in a statement. “We must fight against all efforts to disenfranchise Black voters in South Carolina, and we must work to ensure that Black voters are given fair and equal representation in the halls of the nation’s capital.”
The court filing amends a lawsuit originally lodged in October that challenges 29 of the recently adopted state House districts on similar grounds and marks the first of what could be multiple legal challenges brought against the new congressional map, which critics have slammed for protecting the 6-1 Republican advantage in the U.S. House.
The amended complaint names as defendants South Carolina House and Senate Republican leaders and the State Election Commission’s director and commissioners. Gov. Henry McMaster, who had been a named defendant in the lawsuit’s first two iterations, was removed in the latest filing.
The case will be heard by the three-judge panel of Michelle Childs, Toby Heytens and Richard Gergel. Childs, a federal appeals court nominee who is under consideration to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, is the presiding judge.
The new filing asks the court to find unconstitutional the previously challenged state House districts and the 1st, 2nd and 5th congressional districts, and to enjoin state lawmakers from holding 2022 elections until constitutionally-compliant plans are adopted.
It chides the Legislature for adopting “perhaps the worst option of the available maps” that were proposed and asserts lawmakers could have chosen any number of alternatives that would not have cemented a Republican advantage in all but one congressional district while simultaneously harming Black voters.
The new congressional plan rates slightly worse on measures of competitiveness, proportionality and splitting than the prior map and significantly worse on those metrics than proposals submitted by the League of Women Voters of South Carolina and Sen. Dick Harpootlian, D-Richland, according to Dave’s Redistricting, a voting map analysis tool.
Republicans have denied allegations that the new map intentionally packs and cracks Black voters and defended the redrawn congressional map on the grounds it hews closely to the prior map, which was precleared by the U.S. Department of Justice and withstood a legal challenge.
Suit alleges racial gerrymandering, intentional discrimination
Many of the lawsuit’s arguments mirror those Democrats and public interest groups, such as the League, made during debate on the bill, and in fact, some of their arguments about the map’s packing and cracking of Black voters are cited directly.
The complaint claims the new map, which closely resembles the old map, appears to preserve the ability of Black voters to elect a candidate of their choice in the 6th Congressional District, represented by House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-Columbia, while “working adeptly to deny the ability of Black voters to elect or even influence elections in any of the other six congressional districts.”
African Americans make up 27% of South Carolina’s population, according to the 2020 U.S. census, but as drawn, no district besides the 6th has that many Black voting-age residents.
Even the 6th, which had been a majority-Black district since its inception, saw its percentage of Black voters drop from 51.4% to 45.9% in the new map.
Rather than moving Black voters from the 6th into another district where they could have an electoral impact, the suit claims the new map dilutes their voting strength by spreading them across multiple districts to ensure that no other district has enough Black voters to elect their preferred candidates.
“These changes result in a significantly reduced (Black voting age population) in CD 6, but no benefit of increasing Black voters’ ability to meaningfully elect or even influence the election of candidates of choice in other (congressional districts),” it argues.
Prior to Thursday’s filing, the three-judge panel had been scheduled to hear the challenge to the state House map between Feb. 28 and March 8, with a judicial decision due by March 14.
The trial has since been rescheduled, but new dates for it have not yet been set.
Editor’s note: On Feb. 15, the trial was rescheduled for a later, yet-undetermined date.
This story was originally published February 11, 2022 at 5:00 AM.