Mother Jones; Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/ZUMA; Tim Mossholder/Unsplash

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the constitutionality of a South Carolina congressional map that a lower court had previously found diluted the power of Black voters. In a 6-3 decision authored by Justice Samuel Alito, the Court’s conservative supermajority wrote that “the Challengers provided no direct evidence of a racial gerrymander, and their circumstantial evidence is very weak.”

The court’s ruling protects the seat of GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, a onetime relative moderate who has veered sharply to the right after Republicans redrew her district following the 2020 census to make it more GOP-friendly. She was one of eight House Republicans who voted to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and she subsequently endorsed Donald Trump despite once saying that she held him responsible for the January 6 insurrection. Mace defeated Democrat Joe Cunningham by one point in 2020, but she won reelection in her redrawn Charleston-based district by 14 points in 2022.

A GOP state senator from the area said he wanted to “give the district a stronger Republican........

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