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The map of the First Congressional District of South Carolina was designed using a gerrymandering racial and unconstitutional and its boundaries must be redefined before future elections are held, a panel of three federal judges ruled unanimously Friday, according to The Associated Press.
South Carolina used the maps in the 2022 election after the Republican-dominated state legislature redrew the Republican lines earlier this year, following the 2020 Census.
Federal judges ordered South Carolina lawmakers to draw new maps of Congress by the end of March and ruled Friday that the lines of the First House District, which awards a seat that was traded for Democrats in elections four years ago, they were intentionally redesigned to divide African-American neighborhoods and dilute their voting power.
Friday’s ruling said the first coastal district that runs from Charleston to Hilton Head Island was designed to weed out African-American voters and make it a safer seat for Republicans.
“The movement of more than 30,000 African Americans in a single county from Congressional District No. 1 to Congressional District No. 6 created clear racial gerrymandering of Charleston County,” the judges wrote, saying the measure violated the voters’ guarantee. African Americans to receive equal protection of the laws under the 14th Amendment.
The judges said that elections cannot be held on the 1st. District until redraw. It is not known whether officials in that state would appeal the ruling.
The House map approved in January moved 62% of black voters in Charleston County from the 1st District to the 6th Districta seat that Rep. Jim Clyburn, a black Democrat, has held for 30 years.
The change helped make the new First District a Republican stronghold in the November election. In November, Rep. Nancy Mace, the Republican incumbent, won re-election by 14 percentage points.
But the justices rejected arguments that two more of the state’s seven House districts were also illegally gerrymandered, saying voting rights advocates had failed to show that their boundaries were drawn predominantly to dilute the voting power of African Americans.
The decision by the panel of federal judges was a victory for the civil rights groups that brought the lawsuit.
With information from The New York Times and The Associated Press
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