Source: Politics<\/p>\n
South Carolina will use a congressional map a federal court ruled was \u201cunconstitutional\u201d in this year\u2019s election, following uncertainty around the timing of the Supreme Court\u2019s review of a district that a lower court deemed was racially gerrymandered.<\/p>\n
Republican lawmakers shuffled thousands of Black voters out of the state\u2019s 1st District, represented by GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, to make the Charleston-area district more reliably red. The state NAACP sued, arguing that the legislature\u2019s action was unconstitutionally discriminatory.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court heard the case \u2014 Alexander v. South Carolina Conference of the NAACP \u2014 in October, which tests the legal limits of partisan gerrymandering when it intersects with race, POLITICO previously reported<\/a>. The conservative majority seemed likely to side with the South Carolina Republican lawmakers and allow the map to stand.<\/p>\n The same panel of lower court judges that initially found it unconstitutional said in an order on Thursday<\/a> that the state would use the map for this year\u2019s election, ahead of the congressional primaries on June 11. The deadline to send military and overseas absentee ballots is April 27.<\/p>\n As a result, it is \u201cplainly impractical\u201d for the court to wait on a higher judicial decision, the judges wrote in the order.<\/p>\n \u201cWith the primary election procedures rapidly approaching, the appeal before the Supreme Court still pending, and no remedial plan in place, the ideal must bend to the practical,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n