Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP
The Supreme Court threw out a lower court's finding that South Carolina racially gerrymandered a congressional district, ruling that the challengers' evidence was too weak to overcome the legal presumption that the legislature acted in good faith.
The decision tightens the burden on challengers in racial-gerrymandering cases — particularly by treating the failure to produce an 'alternative map' as a significant concession — making it harder to prove that a legislature used race, rather than partisan strategy, to draw district lines.
“Without an alternative map, it is diffcult for plaintiffs to defeat our starting presumption that the legislature acted in good faith.”
The majority explaining why challengers who don't produce an alternative redistricting map face a nearly insurmountable hurdle.
How it got here: A three-judge federal district court found that South Carolina racially gerrymandered Congressional District 1; the State appealed directly to the Supreme Court, which noted probable jurisdiction and heard the case.
The Case in Depth
What happened
After the 2020 census, South Carolina's Republican-controlled legislature redrew its congressional districts with an explicit goal of making District 1 a more reliably Republican seat. To do so, it moved roughly 140,000 people into or out of the district — expelling a disproportionately large share of Black residents in Charleston County by shifting heavily Black precincts into the neighboring, majority-Black District 6. The NAACP and a District 1 voter sued, arguing the legislature sorted voters by race rather than purely by party affiliation.
The question before the Court
Did South Carolina racially gerrymander Congressional District 1 by sorting voters based on their race — rather than just their partisan preferences — when redrawing the district's lines after the 2020 census?
The Court's answer
No — the Supreme Court held that South Carolina did not unconstitutionally racially gerrymander District 1. The challengers offered no direct evidence that the legislature targeted voters based on race. Their circumstantial evidence was weak, and their four statistical expert reports all suffered from fatal methodological flaws — they failed to control for partisanship, contiguity, compactness, and core district retention, making them unable to separate racial from political motivations. The challengers also never produced an alternative map showing the legislature could have achieved its Republican-tilt goal while keeping more Black voters in the district, which the Court treated as a meaningful concession.
The Court also reversed the separate vote-dilution finding, which the district court had rested entirely on its flawed racial gerrymandering analysis. A vote-dilution claim is legally distinct: it requires showing the State drew lines as a deliberate tool to cancel out minority voters' political power, not merely that race played a predominant role. That question was sent back to the lower court to be analyzed under the correct standard.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Voters who believe their state drew district lines based on race now face a higher practical bar in court. In particular, challengers will be expected to present an alternative map showing the legislature's stated political goals could have been met with a more racially balanced district. Without such a map, courts are directed to draw a negative inference against the challengers — a rule that can be decisive in most cases.
What changes now
The racial gerrymandering claim is fully resolved in South Carolina's favor, and the current district lines remain in place. The case returns to the three-judge district court only to reconsider the separate vote-dilution claim under the correct legal standard — whether the legislature drew District 1 as a deliberate tool to suppress Black voters' political power. The challengers may still prevail on that narrower question, but they must rebuild their case under a different legal framework.
What this does not decide
The ruling settles the racial gerrymandering claim but does not determine whether South Carolina's map unlawfully dilutes the Black vote — that question is sent back to the lower court. The decision also does not hold that racial gerrymandering claims can never succeed; it rules only that this challengers' evidence was insufficient under existing standards.
Concurrences and dissents
How the Justices voted
Majority (5). Justice Alito (author), joined by Justice Roberts, Justice Gorsuch, Justice Kavanaugh, and Justice Barrett.
Separate writings (1). Justice Thomas (author of a concurrence (in part)).
Dissent (3). Justice Kagan (author), joined by Justice Sotomayor and Justice Jackson.
Concurrence in part — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas joined the majority's conclusion but not the section critiquing the challengers' expert reports, arguing that detailed appellate scrutiny of statistical methodologies exceeds the proper scope of clear-error review. He wrote separately to argue that racial gerrymandering and vote-dilution claims are nonjusticiable political questions that federal courts have no authority to decide — both because they lack manageable judicial standards and because the Elections Clause commits supervisory authority over congressional districting exclusively to Congress, not courts.
Dissent — Justice Kagan
“Today, for all practical purposes, the Cooper dissent becomes the law.”Justice Kagan's pointed observation that the majority's approach mirrors what Justice Alito had argued in dissent seven years earlier.
Justice Kagan argued that the majority effectively inverted the clear-error standard by giving all deference to the losing State rather than to the district court that actually heard the evidence. She contended the challengers made a strong, plausible case — backed by direct evidence of racial data use, stark racial disparities in voter removal, and statistical expert studies — that the district court was entitled to credit. She also argued the majority's new 'adverse inference' for failure to submit an alternative map directly contradicts Cooper v. Harris, which expressly rejected making such maps a mandatory element of proof. Read the full dissent →
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Equal Protection Clause requires challengers to prove that race was the 'predominant factor' motivating the legislature's line-drawing — not just one factor among many. Courts also begin with a presumption that state legislatures acted in good faith, which means ambiguous evidence must be read in the legislature's favor, not the challengers'.
- Race and partisan preference are highly correlated in South Carolina: roughly 90% of Black voters supported Democratic candidates in recent elections. Because of that correlation, any map designed to deliver a Republican-leaning district will almost certainly also reduce the share of Black voters. Courts must therefore 'disentangle race from politics' before concluding that race, rather than partisanship, drove the line-drawing — and if either explanation is equally plausible, the challengers have not met their burden.
- The district court relied on four inferences to find a racial motive: that the Black voting-age population (BVAP) stayed near 17% despite major changes, that more people were moved than required by the equal-population rule, that heavily Black Charleston precincts were moved out, and that state staffers viewed racial data during the process. The Court found each inference clearly erroneous because the legislature's avowed partisan goal — securing a reliable Republican majority — provided an equally or more plausible explanation for every decision, and the presumption of good faith required crediting that explanation.
- The challengers' four expert reports were fatally flawed because they failed to account for the traditional redistricting factors the legislature actually used. They did not control for partisanship — the very factor at the heart of the State's defense — and most also ignored contiguity, compactness, and core district retention (the practice of keeping much of an existing district intact). A report that ignores the criteria a legislature was actually applying cannot show that race, not those criteria, drove the outcome.
- Courts must draw an adverse inference — potentially decisive — against challengers who fail to submit an 'alternative map' showing that the legislature's stated political goals could have been achieved with greater racial balance. Such a map directly disproves a partisan-only defense; its absence, when maps are easy to generate, is treated as an implicit concession that no such map exists. The district court misread prior precedent by treating alternative maps as relevant only to fashioning a remedy, not to proving the underlying violation.
- A vote-dilution claim is analytically distinct from a racial-gerrymandering claim and requires its own separate proof: that the State enacted its districting plan as a 'purposeful device to minimize or cancel out' minority voters' political power, and that the plan has both the purpose and effect of diluting the minority vote. The district court skipped that analysis and simply imported its flawed racial-gerrymandering findings, an error requiring the vote-dilution claim to be reconsidered from scratch on remand.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Cooper v. Harris (581 U.S. 285)
Cooper's rejection of a mandatory alternative-map requirement does not bar courts from drawing an adverse inference when plaintiffs omit such a map.
Reaffirms Easley v. Cromartie (532 U.S. 234)
Plaintiffs must still show a legislature could have achieved its political goals with greater racial balance, as Cromartie required.
Reaffirms Miller v. Johnson (515 U.S. 900)
The 'predominant factor' test and presumption of legislative good faith remain the controlling standard for racial gerrymandering claims.