Supreme court rules South Carolina doesn’t need to redraw congressional map to consider Black voters

The case was brought by the South Carolina branch of the NAACP and a South Carolina voter. Photograph: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

South Carolina Republicans do not need to redraw their congressional map, the US supreme court ruled on Thursday, saying that a lower court had not properly evaluated the evidence when it ruled that the lawmakers had discriminated against Black voters.

In a 6-3 decision, the justices sent the case back to the lower court for further consideration. The decision, in Alexander v South Carolina Conference of the NAACP, is a major win for Republicans, who hold a slim margin in the US House with six of South Carolina’s seven congressional seats. It also could give lawmakers more leeway to discriminate in redistricting and use partisanship as a proxy for race. That could be enormously powerful in the US south, where voting is often racially polarized.