WaPo: “Many fellow Democrats lack her confidence. This spring, the Supreme Court signed off on district lines in South Carolina that Republican state lawmakers said they had designed to benefit their party. The 1st District, held for the last four years by Rep. Nancy Mace (R), had previously been competitive but is now ranked solidly Republican by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report after the redrawn lines placed more Republican voters in the district and ensured the share of Black voters would not rise, staying at 17 percent.
A federal three-judge panel last yearfound that the district lines represented an unconstitutional racial gerrymander that “exiled” to a neighboring district tens of thousands of Black voters who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats. But Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing in May for a six-justice Supreme Court majority consisting entirely of GOP nominees, contended there was little evidence that South Carolina lawmakers had focused on race as they drew lines to maximize a Republican edge. Gerrymandering for partisan advantage, the court has previously ruled, cannot be blocked by federal courts.
In a blistering dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the majority had cleared the way for discrimination by giving states a green light for “using race as a short-cut to bring about partisan gains.”