Supreme Court sides with South Carolina Republicans in redistricting dispute
CBSN
Washington — The Supreme Court on Thursday maintained the lines of a congressional district in South Carolina that a lower court had invalidated as an unlawful racial gerrymander, delivering a win to Republican mapmakers who said they used politics, not race, as the predominant factor when drawing the district bounds.
The 6-3 ruling from the high court reverses the ruling from a three-judge district court panel that found GOP lawmakers improperly used race when designing Congressional District 1, represented by Republican Rep. Nancy Mace.
In a majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, the court's conservative justices said that the district court's findings were "clearly erroneous." Race and politics "closely correlate" in South Carolina, and voters who challenged the congressional lines failed to provide direct evidence of a racial gerrymander, the Supreme Court said.
