Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP
Issues
Did the South Carolina redistricting process violate the Equal Protection Clause in setting a racial target in the design process for one of its districts?
This case asks the Supreme Court to determine whether the district court panel erred in ruling that South Carolina’s Congressional District 1 (“CD1”) was a racial gerrymander prohibited by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Appellee the South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP (“the NAACP”) asserts that the panel correctly found that the redistricting board set a 17% black voting age population (“BVAP”) target for their new map of CD1 to create a partisan tilt favoring Republican candidates. Appellant Thomas Alexander (“Alexander”) asserts that racial data was not a factor in the redistricting process and that, instead, the designers of CD1 relied on political data, mainly the precinct-level voting patterns from the 2020 election. Thus, Alexander argues that CD1 does not violate equal protection jurisprudence which permits a political, but not racial, gerrymander. Because of the small majority the Republican Party holds in the US House of Representatives, this case has the potential to have a major shift on both South Carolina’s congressional delegation, but also the political tilt of the House as a whole.
Questions as Framed for the Court by the Parties
(1) Whether the district court erred when it failed to apply the presumption of good faith and to holistically analyze South Carolina Congressional District 1 and the South Carolina General Assembly’s intent;
(2) whether the district court erred in failing to enforce the alternative-map requirement in this circumstantial case;
(3) whether the district court erred when it failed to disentangle race from politics;
(4) whether the district court erred in finding racial predominance when it never analyzed District 1’s compliance with traditional districting principles;
(5) whether the district court clearly erred in finding that the General Assembly used a racial target as a proxy for politics when the record showed only that the General Assembly was aware of race, that race and politics are highly correlated, and that the General Assembly drew districts based on election data; and
(6) whether the district court erred in upholding the intentional-discrimination claim when it never even considered whether—let alone found that—District 1 has a discriminatory effect.
In 2022, the South Carolina Senate adopted a reapportionment plan (“Senate Plan”) to redesign the congressional districts. South Carolina State Conf. of the NAACP v Alexander at 6-7. Although Congressional districts should have almost equal population, Congressional District No.
Additional Resources
- Zack Montellaro, Supreme Court to hear racial redistricting case from South Carolina, Politico (May 15, 2023).
- Caitlin Byrd, Federal judges strike down SC’s 1st Congressional District as racial gerrymandering, The Post and Courier (Jan. 6, 2023).