By Jack O’Toole
Statehouse Report When South Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature redrew the state’s 1st Congressional District map in 2022, few denied one goal was to make it easier for a Republican — specifically, incumbent U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace — to win the seat.
In fact, state officials argued exactly that when the district lines were unsuccessfully challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court last year, telling the court that the legislature’s intent in moving 30,000 Black voters out of the district was to disadvantage Democrats — not African Americans who happen to be Democrats.
This week, the League of Women Voters of South Carolina (LWVSC) asked the state Supreme Court to weigh in, arguing that such undisputed partisan gerrymandering violates the state constitution’s promise that every voter “shall have an equal right to elect officers.”
That language, argued ACLU attorney Allen Chaney on behalf of LWVSC, guarantees South Carolinians not just a right to vote, but a right to have their votes count as much as any other citizen’s. Partisan gerrymandering, he told the court, violates that
right by intentionally diluting the impact of some votes while enhancing the impact of others.
In response, lawyers for the legislature and GOP Gov. Henry McMaster argued the state constitution gives lawmakers exclusive authority to draw district lines, meaning the court cannot secondguess their decisions. What’s more, the attorneys said, even if the justices disagreed with the exclusive authority argument, it would be unwise for the court to intervene in the complex “political thicket” of redistricting, which the court does not have the expertise to adjudicate.
For their part, the justices generally seemed hesitant to get involved, peppering Chaney with questions about what standard they could use to distinguish between a legal district with a natural Democratic or Republican majority and an illegally gerrymandered one.
“Intent,” Chaney answered, telling the justices that a violation occurs anytime “the state says, ‘You have to go vote there so that you don’t affect the outcome that we’re trying to achieve [here].’”
The court has not given an indication of when it will rule in the case.