A prolonged federal lawsuit concerning South Carolina’s congressional map, initiated by the South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and a Black voter, has come to a close. Last Friday, the parties involved agreed to voluntarily dismiss their remaining claim, which had originally challenged the map as racially gerrymandered and discriminatory.
This decision marks the end of a legal battle that has spanned nearly three years and reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The case, which gained national attention, ultimately left Black voters in the Charleston area with a congressional map that many experts and advocates argue is neither fair nor representative.
Earlier in May, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned a prior ruling by a three-judge panel, which had determined that South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The panel had found that over 30,000 Black voters had been moved out of Charleston County to create the district.