Oral arguments in a legal dispute over the 2022 congressional map commenced in the South Carolina Supreme Court on June 24.
Allen Chaney, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina, stood before a five-judge panel in the Columbia courthouse on behalf of the League of Women Voters of South Carolina in a 2024 lawsuit.
The League of Women Voters is accusing the state of reworking district lines to give Republican candidates an advantage with the congressional redistricting plan, which Gov. Henry McMaster signed on Jan. 26, 2022.
"Elections in the first congressional district are neither free nor open," Chaney said.
"Today, we’ve asked the Court to restore the State Constitution’s promise of free and fair elections where every South Carolinian’s vote counts the same," Adriel L. Cepeda Derieux, the deputy director of the ACLU Voting Rights Project, said in a statement. "South Carolina's constitution protects voters from having their voices manipulated for partisan gain."
League of Women Voters of South Carolina says the state's current congressional map violates several parts of South Carolina's constitution, including the Free and Open Elections Clause and the Equal Protections Clause."There is direct evidence of intent and clear evidence of effect," Chaney said.
In January 2023, a federal three-judge panel ruled in a separate lawsuit (South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP v. Alexander) that South Carolina's legislature racially gerrymandered CD1 by transitioning 30,000 Black Charleston County residents out of CD1 and into CD6. The state appealed that decision, moving the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court decided in May 2024 that the redistricting was with partisan intent, not on the basis of race.
The case was thrown out based on a previous ruling that stated federal courts should not consider partisan gerrymandering cases, and the 2022 congressional map stayed in place.
Lynn Teague, the League of Women Voters of South Carolina vice president for issues and action, said this lawsuit is different from the previous one, which alleged racial gerrymandering.
"The U.S. Supreme Court had decided they would not consider any gerrymandering other than racial," Teague said. "The state constitutional provides a broader range of very shallow reasons why it could be justiciable."
The court adjourned after about an hour and a half. It is now up to the justices to decide what happens next with the case.
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