Federal court allows SC to keep 1st District voting lines for ’24, gerrymandering lawsuit continues

COLUMBIA — Voting can proceed in South Carolina’s coastal 1st District this year under congressional maps redrawn in 2021 while the U.S. Supreme Court continues to weigh whether the Legislature racially gerrymandered the lines to keep a Republican in office.

The ruling came Thursday from the same panel of federal judges who last year put elections on hold. It follows lawyers for the GOP-controlled Legislature asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and allow elections to continue with candidate filing already underway and primaries set for June 11.

The panel’s reluctant agreement negates the need for the high court to weigh in on the state’s March 16 request.

While preferring that “no further elections are conducted under an invalid plan,” wrote judges for the U.S. District Court in South Carolina, “with the primary election procedures rapidly approaching, the appeal before the Supreme Court still pending, and no remedial plan in place, the ideal must bend to the practical.”

The three federal judges — Richard Gergel, Mary Geiger Lewis and Toby Heytens — ruled in January 2023 that state lawmakers drew the coastal 1st District, held by Republican Nancy Mace, in a way that discriminates against Black voters. The new lines swept in GOP strongholds in Beaufort and Berkeley counties while cutting out some Charleston suburbs and the entire downtown peninsula.

The judicial panel sided with the NAACP, ACLU of South Carolina and Taiwan Scott, a Black Hilton Head Island resident who lives in the 1st District, who sued after the Legislature approved new lines following the 2020 census.

The state appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and has been awaiting a final decision since October 2023, when oral arguments took place.

The lower court judges ordered the state not to hold elections in District 1 without their permission. In February 2023, they gave the state 30 days to submit a new map for review should the nation’s high court uphold the ruling. But there’s been no Supreme Court ruling to date.

Meanwhile, candidate filing for 2024 elections started March 16, South Carolina’s GOP and Democratic primaries are roughly 11 weeks away, and the state Election Commission needs time to get voter logs and ballots to county-level election boards. Election boards must mail absentee ballots for members of the military by late April to comply with federal law.

Even if the high court ruled immediately, “there is simply no longer enough time to implement a new map before the start of mail-in voting,” the state’s lawyers wrote in follow-up filings Tuesday.

“The evidence of disruption and voter confusion is undeniable,” they continued. “Without a stay, candidates and voters cannot be sure which candidates and voters live in which district.”

Besides, they noted, if the U.S. Supreme Court sides with the state, there’s no need for a new map.

But the NAACP and ACLU contend keeping the lines for another election cycle rewards the Republican-controlled Legislature for doing nothing while awaiting justices’ final say.

“South Carolina’s failure to rectify its racially gerrymandered congressional map blatantly disregards our brave clients’ voices and the rights of Black voters,” Adriel Cepeda Derieux, deputy director for the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said in a statement. “By refusing to take meaningful action, the Legislature has undermined democracy and further entrenched voter suppression in the state. Rest assured; we will fight on.”

Allen Chaney, legal director for the ACLU of South Carolina, called legislators “shameless.

“It came to this exclusively because lawmakers sat on their hands and refused to take action,” he told the SC Daily Gazette. “I hope voters reject this gamesmanship that hurts voters and entrenches the power of lawmakers.

“They’ve gotten an extra election out of an unconstitutional redistricting map,” Chaney said. “That’s a harm that’s really difficult to undo.”

If the lower court’s decision is upheld, he said the ACLU will push for an early special election in 2025 using a newly drawn map.

“I don’t think we’re going to need another plan,” Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey said. “We’ll see what the Supreme Court says.”

Massey thinks the district court made the right move letting the state proceed under the existing districts, given that filing for the primaries ends April 1.

South Carolina’s 1st District has long been reliable for Republicans. However, following a population explosion on the coast, Democrat Joe Cunningham in 2018 flipped the seat to blue for the first time in nearly 40 years.

Two years later, Mace ousted him by 1 percentage point. Lawmakers redrew the lines ahead of the 2022 election and Mace easily won against Democrat Annie Andrews.

As of Thursday, 12 candidates have filed to run in the impacted districts:

• District 1, currently held by Mace, which includes voters in Charleston, Berkeley, Dorchester, Colleton, Beaufort and Jasper counties. Three Republicans, including Mace, and three Democrats have filed so far.
• Neighboring District 6, held by Democrat Jim Clyburn since 1992. It stretches from the Charleston peninsula north to Columbia and from the state’s western boundary with Georgia to the Pee Dee. Clyburn has filed for re-election. Two Republicans have filed to challenge him, along with three minor-party candidates.