The Evolving Views on Racial Gerrymandering in the Supreme Court

On May 23, the Supreme Court issued its opinion upholding a South Carolina congressional map against a challenge from the NAACP. In Alexander v South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, the Court found that the South Carolina legislature had conducted a partisan gerrymander, permissible under the Court’s precedents, and not an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. In this episode, two leading election and voting rights scholars, Joshua Douglas of the University of Kentucky College of Law, and Derek Muller of the University of Notre Dame Law School, join Jeffrey Rosento discuss the Alexander v. NAACP majority opinion, as well as the concurrence and dissent, and review what this decision means for the future of racial gerrymandering cases.

Resources:

• Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP (2024)
• Joshua Douglas, The Court v. The Voters: The Troubling Story of How the Supreme Court Has Undermined Voting Rights (2024)
• Joshua Douglas, “Today’s Supreme Court is Anti-Voter,” Washington Monthly (May 28, 2024)
• Derek Muller, “The Long Shadow of the Elections Clause,” Election Law Blog (May 29, 2024) 
• Derek Muller, “Faith in Elections,” 36 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics & Pub. Pol’y 641 (2022)

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