CHARLESTON — The city of Charleston is one of the most important voting rights battlegrounds in the country. In 2021, the Republican-led legislature redrew the congressional districts in the state, pushing 30,000 black voters and two-thirds of the black population of Charleston county into the sixth congressional district to make the first congressional district safer for the incumbent Republican.
A district court struck down the redrawn first district as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, but the Republican legislature led by State Senate Majority Leader Thomas Alexander appealed to the Supreme Court. Now that case, Alexander v. NAACP, will be decided over the next couple of months and the Supreme Court’s decision will determine the political future of Charleston for 2024.
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