Judge focuses on changes to Charleston County as congressional redistricting trial wraps
The fate of South Carolina’s contested congressional map now rests in the hands of a three-judge panel following the conclusion of closing arguments Tuesday.
The panel must decide whether the map, enacted this past January, unconstitutionally discriminates against Black voters in violation of the 14th and 15th amendments, as the South Carolina NAACP argues.
Lawyers for the South Carolina NAACP asserted Tuesday in closing statements that they had proven state lawmakers used race as the primary factor in drawing the 1st, 2nd and 5th congressional districts and that their use of race was motivated by intentional discrimination.
The defense denied the charge, countering that traditional redistricting principles and political considerations had driven line-drawing decisions.
“This was not a plan based on race,” said John Gore, an attorney for the state Senate defendants.
The plaintiffs do not need to prove both of their broad claims of racial gerrymandering and intentional racial discrimination to win their case. The court could require that the congressional map be redrawn, in whole or in part, even if it finds that only one of the claims is met, wholly or partially.
U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel, one of three judges who will jointly rule on the case, intimated Tuesday that he may be leaning toward a split decision.
He homed in on the question of racial gerrymandering in the coastal 1st District, represented by Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, but seemed to give less weight to arguments that racial factors predominated in the 2nd and 5th districts. Gergel also said he was “not crazy about” the plaintiffs’ claim that lawmakers were motivated by discriminatory intent.
Keeping the 1st District red was priority
Preserving the 1st District as a safe Republican seat was of paramount importance to GOP leaders, multiple state lawmakers and staffers testified during the trial.
“I think saying that (partisanship) was a factor is an understatement. It was one of the most important factors,” Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, testified last month at trial. “The Senate was not going to pass a plan that sacrificed the 1st.”
The 1st District, which had trended toward Democrats in recent years and was briefly held by former Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham, became solidly Republican under the new congressional map used in this year’s election.
Mace, who defeated Cunningham by a single point in 2020 under the old map, cruised to victory against Democratic challenger Annie Andrews by nearly 14 points earlier this month.
While GOP leaders acknowledged at trial that the map was drawn to enhance Republicans’ political advantage in the 1st, they argued race was not used to accomplish that goal.
Rather, district lines were adjusted to maximize political advantage while still retaining the cores of existing districts and protecting incumbents.
The enacted map, Gore said, actually scored higher on some traditional redistricting measures than the plans favored by Democrats. Not only did it preserve district cores, protect incumbents and repair county and precinct splits, it was the only plan that virtually guaranteed Republicans would control the increasingly competitive 1st District, Gore argued.
State Sen. Chip Campsen, R-Charleston, a redistricting committee member who presented what became the enacted plan on the Senate floor, testified at trial that he intentionally avoided looking at the racial implications of the map and was only interested in creating a map favorable to Republicans that adhered to traditional redistricting principles.
Lawyers for the South Carolina NAACP argued Tuesday that Republicans’ political explanations for their map-drawing decisions were post-hoc rationalizations. At the time, GOP leaders denied or did not indicate that politics were driving their decisions, they said.
What the data shows
The plaintiffs attempted to make their case by pointing to the testimony of numerous redistricting experts they retained to statistically analyze the enacted congressional map. The experts found the map was racially biased, even when controlling for the GOP’s stated political interests.
Adriel Cepeda Derieux, an attorney for the South Carolina NAACP, argued that traditional redistricting principles were selectively applied. Black communities that had been split in the old map remained that way in the name of “core retention,” while white areas that had been split were made whole, he said.
The map “drastically reconfigured” Charleston County, moving a disproportionate number of Black residents from the 1st to the 6th District, and in turn diluting their voting power, he said.
While the enacted map moved nearly 200,000 voters into or out of District 1, the percentage of Black voters in the district remained remarkably static at about 17%, a sign of “precision engineering,” Cepeda Derieux said.
Gergel latched onto an analysis that showed a disproportionate number of Black voters in Charleston County were moved from District 1 to District 6, a majority-minority district represented by House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn.
Black voters in Charleston County were split roughly 50-50 between the 1st and 6th districts in the old map, but are now 80-20 in the 6th after reapportionment.
That racial sorting appears to have been done by design, Gergel said. He said the decision by state GOP leaders to make Berkeley and Beaufort counties whole in the 1st District left the mapmaker no choice but to “bleach Charleston,” if the district was to remain a safe Republican seat.
“He basically got every Black vote he could reach” and moved it into the 6th District, said Gergel, who said race appeared to have been used as a proxy for partisanship.
“If you see a turtle on top of a fencepost, you know someone put it there,” Gergel said. “This is not a coincidence.”
Gore responded that the net effect is what matters in this instance. The enacted map raised the Republican vote share in the 1st District by 1.36 points, but increased the proportion of Black voters by just 0.16 percentage points, he said.
The political effect, Gore said, is much greater than the racial effect.
He argued there was no direct evidence that lawmakers used race to make map-drawing decisions or had any discriminatory intent. The plaintiffs, Gore said, had such a weak case they were forced to mischaracterize evidence and failed to present an alternative plan that could disprove the defense’s assertion that politics motivated line-drawing decisions.
What’s next?
The judges don’t have a deadline to issue a decision on the case, and any appeal of the panel’s ruling will go directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.
If the panel finds in favor of either of the plaintiffs’ claims, they could order the Legislature to redraw all or a portion of the enacted congressional map.
In such a scenario, a hearing would be held to establish a timeline for redrawing and implementing a modified map that the court deems acceptable.
Antonio Ingram, an attorney for the South Carolina NAACP, said the plaintiffs will ask that special elections be held in any districts the panel finds unconstitutional.
This story was originally published November 29, 2022 at 2:52 PM with the headline "Judge focuses on changes to Charleston County as congressional redistricting trial wraps."