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22 ALEXANDER v. SOUTH CAROLINA STATE CONFERENCE OF THE NAACP KAGAN, J., dissenting single best thing Roberts and his staff could do to increase the future Republican vote in District 1 was to exclude a Black voter. That fact would not have meant they looked at racial data alone; they also had the 2020 election data on their computers. But the racial data offered a potent tool for ensuring that District 1 would vote for a Republican in coming elections. 6 And strong evidence showed, as the District Court found, that the mapmakers wielded this tool—that they used their racial data to meet the BVAP level needed to achieve their partisan goal. Recall the large turnover of voters in District 1. See supra, at 15. Some 53,000 people were moved into, and 140,000 people were moved out of, the district (which wound up with 730,000 total). Yet the district’s racial balance did not budge. The district began with a 16.6% BVAP. See J. S. A. 430a. That number went up with the 53,000person addition, because almost 40% of the new residents were Black. See id., at 439a. So what did the mapmakers do? As noted earlier, they removed from District 1 over 60% of Black Charleston County residents, by excising a part of the county more than twice as Black (23.8%) as the part they kept in (10.3%). See 649 F. Supp. 3d, at 189–190; Supp. App. 153a; supra, at 16. That brought the district’s BVAP right back down to 16.7%—again below the 17% required to create the desired Republican tilt. See J. S. A. 452a; 649 F. Supp. 3d, at 188. In the majority’s description, —————— 6 In arguing to the contrary—that the political data was superior to, and would have removed any incentive to use, racial data—the majority emphasizes that only the political data “accounted for voter turnout.” Ante, at 18, and n. 7, 33. But as one of the Challengers’ experts explained, that fact is a double-edged sword, because turnout in presidential elections is highly unrepresentative of turnout in off-year ones. See App. 135. And still more important, the mapmakers did not have to make a choice between using political data alone and racial data alone. They could get whatever turnout (or other) information the political data provided even as they used the racial data as an especially reliable and accurate measure of individual voting behavior.

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Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP

Judgment

Question Presented: Whether the South Carolina legislature “subordinated” race-neutral districting criteria to draw a Congressional district map in the state and overtly relied on racial considerations.

Alleged Acts: The plaintiffs alleged that the defendant violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by unconstitutionally using race as a factor in drawing a new Congressional map after the completion of the 2020 census.

Procedural history: The plaintiffs first filed the case in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, which held that the defendant predominantly relied on race when it drew the map. The Court ordered the defendant to re-draw a new map within 30 days of the Court’s decision. The defendant then appealed the case directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Summary: The case concerns South Carolina’s Congressional District 1, which is historically Republican leaning. After completing the 2020 census, the state legislature drew a new Congressional district map that moved many Black voters from District 1 to District 6 – a historically Democrat-leaning district – establishing District 1 as a Republican-heavy location and District 6 as a Democrat-heavy location. After the new map was enacted, the South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, along with the South Carolina chapter of the ACLU and multiple other plaintiffs, sued the state in court and alleged that the map violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because the state legislature relied on partisan or racial motives when approving the map. The plaintiffs chiefly alleged that the defendants intended to dilute the voting power of black voters within the state by moving them out of District 1, thereby removing its competitiveness as a possible swing district. The plaintiffs relied on testimony from expert witnesses about the likely partisan swing that would result from drastically shifting the boundaries of the district and argued that the influence black voters wielded in South Carolina would vastly diminish once most black voters were packed into District 6. The case concerns South Carolina’s Congressional District 1, which is historically Republican leaning. After completing the 2020 census, the state legislature drew a new Congressional district map that moved many Black voters from District 1 to District 6 – a historically Democrat-leaning district – establishing District 1 as a Republican-heavy location and District 6 as a Democrat-heavy location. After the new map was enacted, the South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, along with the South Carolina chapter of the ACLU and multiple other plaintiffs, sued the state in court and alleged that the map violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because the state legislature relied on partisan or racial motives when approving the map. The plaintiffs chiefly alleged that the defendants intended to dilute the voting power of black voters within the state by moving them out of District 1, thereby removing its competitiveness as a possible swing district. The plaintiffs relied on testimony from expert witnesses about the likely partisan swing that would result from drastically shifting the boundaries of the district and argued that the influence black voters wielded in South Carolina would vastly diminish once most black voters were packed into District 6. An important factor in the Court’s evaluation of this claim is intent to rely on racial considerations when drawing the map. If the government intentionally uses racial considerations in policymaking, then such actions are immediately subjected to strict scrutiny by the court. This means that the government must show there was a compelling government interest to consider race, and the use of race is narrowly tailored to the issue. However, this test is only applied if there was an intent to use race; thus, it cannot merely seem like the legislature relied on racial considerations. As the Court held, the question was not “whether the State used the best available data but whether it is reasonable to infer that the mapmakers’ political data was so obviously flawed that they must have surreptitiously used racial data.” The Court argued, for example, that polling data and political science imply some pattern of similar political beliefs among racial groups. As such, it is possible for a map that is constitutionally gerrymandered by political bias to look very similar to a map unconstitutionally gerrymandered by racial bias. Referencing the case Hunt v. Cromartie, the Court held that “a jurisdiction may engage in constitutional political gerrymandering, even if it so happens that the most loyal Democrats happen to be black Democrats and even if the State were conscious of that fact” (although, it also held that a map is unconstitutional if it was “unexplainable on grounds other than race.”).

Conclusion: The Court held that the South Carolina map did not violate the Constitution because there was not a clear intent by the legislature to rely on race in redrawing District 1. Thus, the map was not subjected to strict scrutiny and was deemed constitutional. The Court ultimately found that the plaintiffs could not satisfactorily prove that race was the defining consideration in drawing the map. As the Court held in Hunt, it argued that a map drawn on purely partisan considerations could look nearly identical to a map drawn on purely racial considerations, and that the possibility of racial bias in a map did not definitively prove it existed or influenced the map’s outcome. The Court rejected the plaintiffs’ complaint that the map had intentionally diluted black voters’ influence in the state and held that the change in percentage of black voters in District 1 before and after its redrawing did not appear malicious or driven by racial intent. Instead, the Court held that the map could just as easily be explained as an attempt to re-draw the district based on partisan considerations and that the Court had no jurisdiction over political matters. Thus, the South Carolina congressional map was upheld.

Legal Issue(s)

Electoral Maps and Districting

Applicable Law(s): U.S. Constitution, Amend. XIV

Region: Americas

Country: United States of America

Language of Decision

English

Court: Supreme Court

Election Type: Parliamentary

Date of decision: May 23, 2024

Geolocation

Latitude: 38.858246166413835

Longitude: -77.00683638453484

: Geolocation

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Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP CASE.pdf
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Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP

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