Justice Kagan dissenting in the South Carolina gerrymandering case:

“The majority’s attempt to explain its contrary result fails at every turn. The majority picks and chooses evidence to its liking; ignores or minimizes less convenient proof; disdains the panel’s judgments about witness credibility; and makes a series of mistakes about expert opinions. The majority declares that it knows better than the District Court what happened in a South Carolina map-drawing room to produce District 1. But the proof is in the pudding: On page after page, the majority’s opinion betrays its distance from, and lack of familiarity with, the events and evidence central to this case.”

The case presented the court with the tricky issue of how to distinguish race from politics. The state argued that partisan politics, not race, and a population boom in coastal areas explain the congressional map. Moving voters based on their politics is OK, the Supreme Court has held.

This right here is the real problem. Partisan gerrymandering is essentially no different than allowing the party in power to declare that their party only needs 40% of the vote to win an election, while requiring everyone else to get over 60% to win. It’s a method of rigging elections. Giving it a thumbs up is a direct attack on democracy, and is among the worst things the Court has ever done.

We need an updated voting rights act and a very different Supreme Court.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The state argued that partisan politics, not race, and a population boom in coastal areas explain the congressional map.

A lower court had ordered South Carolina to redraw the district after it found that the state used race as a proxy for partisan affiliation in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

But that court had put its order on hold and had already allowed the state to use the challenged map in the 2024 elections.

When Mace first won election in 2020, she edged Democratic incumbent Rep. Joe Cunningham by 1%, under 5,400 votes.

The court’s decision led to a new map with a second district where Democratic-leaning Black voters comprise a substantial portion of the electorate.

But combined with a substantial set of Democratic-leaning white voters, Democrats might have been competitive in the reconfigured district.

The original article contains 300 words, the summary contains 143 words. Saved 52%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

If only, back when Democrats had a majority in the House and the Senate and controlled the Presidency, they’d banned gerrymandering full stop. Alas, they’ll never do that, so the GOP will continue to get away with this.