By Jessica Holdman

COLUMBIA — A Circuit Court judge denied a request from voters’ rights groups to wind back the clock on South Carolina’s congressional redistricting debate, saying House leaders were within their powers to follow their own rules as they pushed to redraw voting lines.

The Freedom of Information Act provisions cited in the lawsuit don’t even apply to the challenged House resolution, Judge Daniel Coble wrote.

That’s because the state constitution empowers the General Assembly to set its own rules of procedure, “free from interference from the judicial and executive branches,” reads his ruling.

It came five hours after lawyers for the South Carolina chapters of the League of Women Voters and American Civil Liberties Union squared off Wednesday with House Republicans’ attorneys in the Richland County Courthouse.

The challenge “raises a purely political question” and “judicial intervention would violate well-established separation of powers principles” between the legislative and judicial branches, Coble wrote in his ruling, agreeing with House GOP arguments.

The hearing was on an emergency request to pause the process pending a decision on the lawsuit’s allegations.

Attorney Kathleen McDaniel, who represented the suing groups, called it perplexing that Coble went further to rule FOIA doesn’t apply to House meeting notices.

“That’s a pretty dangerous decision,” she said. An appeal is possible, since the ruling “could have far-reaching consequences that go beyond this.”

In court, McDaniel told the judge that GOP leaders committed “a shocking violation of open government” to speed up debate and dispense with more than 500 of Democrats’ proposed changes to legislation to redraw congressional districts.

She ultimately wanted Coble to declare that House leaders violated the state’s Freedom of information Act and to reset the clock on the state’s redistricting debate.

That would have voided mid-debate rule changes, as well as a pair of after-midnight House votes that passed the legislation and sent it to the Senate.

“A lot of damage has been done,” McDaniel told the judge. “However, that can be undone by you.”

The legislators’ lawyer argued the meeting was an internal matter of House rules, making it Speaker Murrell Smith’s prerogative.

“They followed their rules,” attorney Michael Parente said. “The court can’t second guess the judgement of the General Assembly on their rules.”

State open meetings law requires public notice of meetings at least 24 hours in advance. The lawsuit alleged a hastily called gathering of the House Rules Committee violated that statute.

On Monday, it took Republicans 10 hours to get through nine amendments on the mid-decade redistricting map drafted by the National Republican Redistricting Trust.

To end the potential of debate dragging on indefinitely, the House Rules Committee adopted new rules at 7:15 p.m. Monday limiting every legislator to one amendment and debate on each to three minutes. The resolution, adopted by the full House, also allowed up to 10 minutes for any legislator to speak in opposition or support before the chamber voted on the bill itself.

The committee posted notice of the meeting to adopt those rules just eight minutes before it convened, and the meeting ended before reporters could make it to the room.

Republicans’ in-court argument echoed Smith’s ruling on the floor. Responding to complaints from legislators, Smith said the open meetings law doesn’t apply to the House Rules Committee.

“This is not a committee for the public,” the Sumter Republican said in overriding their motions. “Internal workings of the House are not subject to FOIA.”

Coble agreed, despite McDaniel’s argument that the House’s self-made rules “can’t contradict state law.”

Directors with the ACLU say they’re not giving up.

“We are disappointed in today’s result but are not deterred,” said Allen Chaney, legal director of the state chapter. “The vital pro-democratic protections of the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act apply with special force to the General Assembly, and we will press forward with litigation to ensure that the people of South Carolina are provided with a fair notice of important legislative hearings.”

The effort to redraw South Carolina’s lines to send seven Republicans to Congress — flipping the lone seat that’s reliably blue — followed a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that threw out Louisiana’s congressional map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

Supporters say it’s necessary to “un-gerrymander” the state’s 6th District, which U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn has held since voters first elected him in 1992.

But opponents argue the U.S. Supreme Court has already rejected claims that South Carolina’s map is racially gerrymandered. Justices’ 2024 ruling found that precincts were moved between the 1st and 6th districts following the 2020 census for partisan, not racial, reasons — basically, to make the coastal 1st District a safe Republican seat again.

And unlike Louisiana and other states tackling mid-decade redistricting, South Carolina no longer has a majority-minority district. A federal court’s 1992 overhaul of South Carolina’s congressional map created a majority-minority 6th District — enabling Clyburn to become the first Black South Carolinian elected to Congress in a century. But changes in population and post-census redistricting since have shrunk the district’s Black population to less than half.

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