In Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, decided 6-3 on May 23, 2024, the Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s ruling that South Carolina’s Congressional District 1 was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and made it substantially harder to win racial gerrymandering cases going forward.1Supreme Court of the United States. Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito held that courts must presume state legislatures act in good faith, that challengers must affirmatively disentangle race from politics when the two correlate, and that failing to produce an alternative map showing the state could have hit its political targets with less racial impact should count against the challenger.
The Map at the Center of the Case
After the 2020 census, South Carolina’s legislature redrew Congressional District 1, anchored in Charleston County, where elections had grown increasingly competitive. The new lines moved roughly 30,000 Black residents out of District 1 and into the neighboring Sixth District, lowering District 1’s Black voting-age population and making the seat safer for Republicans.2Justia. Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP – 602 US (2024)
A three-judge federal district court panel found the legislature had drawn the district with a 17% Black voting-age population target in mind and ruled that race, not politics, had predominated.2Justia. Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP – 602 US (2024) The panel blocked elections under the new map. South Carolina appealed directly to the Supreme Court, as federal law permits when a three-judge panel strikes down a redistricting plan.
The NAACP and individual voters argued the legislature had deliberately targeted Black residents for removal and used partisanship as cover. The state countered that it had sorted voters using precinct-level election results, not racial data, and that any racial effect was an unavoidable byproduct of how closely race and party track one another in the Charleston area.
What the Supreme Court Held
The Court reversed. The majority concluded that the district court’s finding of racial predominance was “clearly erroneous,” the standard appellate courts apply when they are firmly convinced a trial court got the facts wrong despite the deference ordinarily owed to the trial judge.1Supreme Court of the United States. Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP The Court also vacated the district court’s separate vote-dilution ruling, finding the lower court had applied the wrong legal standard, and sent that claim back for further proceedings.2Justia. Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP – 602 US (2024)
The background doctrine comes from Miller v. Johnson (1995), which requires a challenger to show that race was the “predominant factor” behind a district’s design, overriding traditional principles like compactness, contiguity, and respect for political subdivisions.3Justia. Miller v. Johnson – 515 US 900 (1995) Alexander did not change that test. It changed how courts are supposed to apply it when race and party correlate.
The Presumption of Good Faith
The majority leaned heavily on the rule that courts must start from the premise that the legislature acted in good faith. When a state says it sorted voters by party, and the racial numbers happen to track the partisan ones, a court cannot treat the racial effect as proof of racial intent. The presumption requires the court to credit the political explanation unless the challenger’s evidence makes the racial one more convincing.1Supreme Court of the United States. Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP The district court, in the majority’s view, had skipped that step.
Applied to District 1, the circumstantial evidence the challengers assembled could be explained just as readily by the legislature’s stated goal of removing Democratic voters. In the Charleston area, moving Democrats and moving Black residents produce overlapping maps. That overlap alone, the Court said, cannot carry a challenger’s burden.
The Alternative Map Rule
The most consequential new feature of Alexander is what the Court said about alternative maps. The challengers never submitted a map showing the legislature could have hit the same partisan targets while keeping more Black voters in District 1. The majority held that trial courts should draw an adverse inference against plaintiffs who fail to produce such a map.2Justia. Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP – 602 US (2024)
The reasoning: if the claim is that race rather than politics drove the lines, the cleanest proof is a map that meets the same political goals with less racial sorting. Without one, racial intent is hard to tell apart from partisan intent. The Court drew on Easley v. Cromartie (2001), where challengers also lost after failing to produce such a comparison map.4Justia. Easley v. Cromartie – 532 US 234 (2001)
An alternative map is not technically required. In practice, going without one now puts a challenger in a hole from the start. Producing a credible one takes redistricting software, expert witnesses, and granular political data that states possess and challengers often do not.
The Dissent
Justice Elena Kagan dissented, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The dissent argued the majority had selectively weighed the evidence, crediting testimony that favored the state while discounting the district court’s contrary findings. Under ordinary clear-error review, Kagan wrote, factual findings get deference because the trial judge saw the witnesses firsthand. In her view, the majority used the good-faith presumption to override that deference, demanding something closer to proof beyond any alternative explanation rather than a finding on the preponderance of the evidence.
Justice Clarence Thomas concurred in the result but wrote separately to say the majority’s close review of expert reports went further than clear-error review calls for.1Supreme Court of the United States. Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP
How It Fits with Partisan Gerrymandering Doctrine
Alexander sits on top of Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), which held that partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions federal courts cannot resolve.5Justia. Rucho v. Common Cause – 588 US (2019) Racial gerrymandering claims remain available under the Equal Protection Clause.6Constitution Annotated. Fourteenth Amendment – Racial Vote Dilution and Racial Gerrymandering
The combination creates a sharp asymmetry. A state can openly sort voters by party with no federal constitutional limit. If race was the real driver dressed up as partisanship, the map is unconstitutional. Alexander makes it harder to prove the racial explanation whenever a plausible partisan one exists. In jurisdictions where race and party overlap heavily, legislatures have real room to draw maps that disadvantage minority voters as long as the record is built around political data and partisan rationale.
What This Means for Future Challenges
The decision reshapes the landscape heading into the cycle after the 2030 census.
For challengers, the climb is steeper. Disentangling race from politics now requires affirmative proof, not just circumstantial correlation. Direct evidence of racial intent, such as emails or testimony showing legislators discussed explicit racial targets, carries more weight because circumstantial evidence alone will often be dismissed as consistent with partisan sorting. The district court’s finding about the 17% Black voting-age population target did not survive clear-error review on this record, which gives a sense of how much the circumstantial case has to carry.
For state legislatures, the playbook is clearer. Building a map off precinct-level election returns, documenting a partisan rationale at every step, and avoiding explicit reliance on racial demographics tends to insulate a plan from challenge even when the effect on minority voters is identical.
The ruling may also reach beyond the Equal Protection Clause. Vote-dilution claims under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act use a related but distinct framework. The Court remanded the Section 2 claim in this case without resolving it, leaving open whether the majority’s skepticism will carry over to statutory vote-dilution analysis. That question is likely to drive the next round of litigation.
The practical bottom line for voters and advocacy groups: a successful challenge now takes more than showing a map harms minority communities. It takes an affirmative demonstration, usually including an alternative map, that the state’s stated political goals could have been met with less racial impact. That requires resources, expertise, and access to the kind of data the legislature used to draw the lines in the first place.