ProPublica: The state legislature had begun the crucial task of redrawing voting district lines after the 2020 census. Clyburn had a problem: His once majority Black district had suffered a daunting exodus of residents since the last count. He wanted his seat to be made as safe as possible.
Clyburn’s aide carried a hand-drawn map of Clyburn’s 6th District and presented it to Republican committee staffers who were working to reconfigure the state’s congressional boundaries. The sketch added Black voters to Clyburn’s district while moving out some predominantly white precincts that leaned toward the GOP.
The redistricting process was the first South Carolina has undertaken since a series of Supreme Court rulings made it easier for states to redraw their districts.
- In 2013, the high court significantly weakened the Voting Rights Act, removing South Carolina and other Southern states, with their history of Black disenfranchisement, from Department of Justice oversight.
- And in 2019, the Supreme Court opened the door to more aggressive gerrymandering by barring federal court challenges on the basis of partisanship.
- But it can be illegal to draw lines based on race. Republican gerrymanders in Florida, Texas and several other states have recently been challenged for targeting Black voters.
As others attacked the Republican redistricting as an illegal racial gerrymander, Clyburn said nothing publicly. His role throughout the redistricting process has remained out of the public view, and he has denied any involvement in state legislative decisions.
The resulting map, finalized in January 2022, made Clyburn’s lock on power stronger than it might have been otherwise. This came at a cost: Democrats now have virtually no shot of winning any congressional seat in South Carolina other than Clyburn’s, state political leaders on both sides of the aisle say.
South Carolina’s 2021 redistricting is now being challenged in federal court by the NAACP. They contend that Republicans deliberately moved Black voters into Clyburn’s district to solidify their party’s hold on the neighboring swing district, the 1st.
A three-judge federal panel ruled in January that aspects of the state’s map were an unconstitutional racial gerrymander that must be corrected before any more elections in the 1st District are held.
South Carolina’s 2021 redistricting is now being challenged in federal court by the NAACP. The organization contends that Republicans deliberately moved Black voters into Clyburn’s district to solidify their party’s hold on the neighboring swing district, the 1st. A three-judge federal panel ruled in January that aspects of the state’s map were an unconstitutional racial gerrymander that must be corrected before any more elections in the 1st District are held.
But Clyburn’s role already has complicated the NAACP’s case. The judges dismissed some of the group’s contentions partly because Clyburn’s early requests drove some of the mapping changes. The Republicans are now appealing the ruling to the Supreme Court, which has yet to decide if it wants to hear oral arguments in the case.
