CLC joined a brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the right of Black voters in South Carolina to be free from racial gerrymandering.
Back to topOur democracy is meant to be of, by, and for the people — meaning voters have a right to be free from discrimination and to make their voices heard.
In January, a federal court panel unanimously ruled that South Carolina used racial gerrymandering to discriminate against Black voters in the state’s 1st Congressional District — a clear affront to...
After an eight-day trial featuring testimony from dozens of witnesses, three federal judges unanimously concluded that the South Carolina legislature racially gerrymandered Congressional District 1 (CD1) in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court found that the legislature set an impermissible racial target of 17% Black voters in CD 1, and then surgically removed tens of thousands of Black voters from of the district in order to meet it. This was designed, the court found, to “bleach[]” the Black voting community in the Charleston area.
Soon after the court ordered the state to redraw CD 1, South Carolina appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. The case is set for argument on October 11, 2023.
On August 18, CLC joined a friend-of-the-court brief filed by Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and other voting rights organizations urging the Supreme Court to uphold the lower court’s ruling. The brief asks that the Court reject South Carolina’s argument that its hands are clean because its motivation for moving thousands of Black voters out of CD 1 was partisan.
Supreme Court precedent has long made clear that states may not achieve partisan goals by discriminating against voters based on race. The brief requests the Court uphold this precedent and affirm the right of Black South Carolinians to be free from racial gerrymandering.
