The 2024 Elections are less than six months away, and this Supreme Court decision in Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP will establish further precedent in state's redistricting decisions. In terms of the state of South Carolina, SCOTUS has ruled in favor of the maps drawn by the legislators.

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled to reverse a lower court's decision that said a South Carolina redistricting map was unconstitutional, rejecting the idea that it was racially discriminatory.

In a 6-3 decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, the high court said that, "a party challenging a map’s constitutionality must disentangle race and politics if it wishes to prove that the legislature was motivated by race as opposed to partisanship. Second, in assessing a legislature’s work, we start with a presumption that the legislature acted in good faith."

"In this case, which features a challenge to South Carolina’s redistricting efforts in the wake of the 2020 census, the three-judge District Court paid only lip service to these propositions," the decision states.

While this appears similar to the redistricting case in Alabama, there are distinctions. In Allen, Alabama Secretary of State, et al. v. Caster et al, SCOTUS upheld the lower court's decision that the Alabama redistricting maps violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and needed to be redrawn according to the lower court panel's direction. In the South Carolina case, the NAACP brought the lawsuit, and chose to hinge their argument on race and constitutional grounds rather than actual voting rights legislation. This may have been the critical difference in how these rulings were weighted. In January, SCOTUS chose not to hear a voting rights decision made by a Michigan independent redistricting commission.

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to intervene in a battle over race and redistricting in Michigan. In a brief unsigned order, the justices denied a request by the state’s independent redistricting commission to put on hold a lower court’s ruling that requires it to redraw state legislative maps for the Detroit area because the original maps relied too heavily on race.  

If there is a pattern to be seen, it is that SCOTUS presents a bulwark against legislative redistricting decisions that are not grounded in existing case law, while respecting court decisions that are firmly grounded in established legislation. Justice Samuel Alito, who rendered the majority opinion, said as much in the ruling.

This Court has endorsed two related propositions when navigating this tension. First, a party challenging a map’s constitutionality must disentangle race and politics to show that race was the legislature’s “predominant” motivating factor. Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 916. Second, the Court starts with a presumption that the legislature acted in good faith. 

Of course, despite these differing outcomes, when a decision does not support the left's agenda, the usual suspects raise the hue and cry over racism, a corrupt SCOTUS, and threats to democracy.

Today is a bad day for our democracy.

SCOTUS is undermining the voices of voters of color and upholding white supremacy in states like South Carolina.https://t.co/ATuN1KjsHt

— Sarah Ovaska (@SarahOvaska) May 23, 2024