South Carolina governor calls special session on redistricting

South Carolina’s Republican Gov. Henry McMaster called a special session of the state legislature on Thursday afternoon to address redrawing the state’s congressional map.

As Republicans seek to retain control of the U.S. House, leaders of both parties nationwide have sought to redraw their congressional maps to net more seats for their parties, prompted by an April Supreme Court ruling. In the case of South Carolina, Republicans may seek to shift the state’s sole Democratic-leaning district toward the GOP.

The special session will begin Friday morning, according to an executive order signed by McMaster that said “debate was not concluded” on redistricting when the legislature adjourned on Thursday. Two state sources familiar with the planning had told CBS News earlier Thursday that the governor planned to call a special session.

While there were enough GOP holdouts in South Carolina’s Senate to prevent a procedural move to move forward with redistricting on Tuesday, a redistricting bill with a new congressional map will just need a simple majority vote in a special session. 

South Carolina state Sen. Tom Davis, a Republican who voted against Tuesday’s procedural measure, said he will continue to oppose a redraw of the Congressional lines. 

“South Carolina’s maps are legally sound, our electoral position is strong, and the process being proposed remains constitutionally and practically indefensible,” he said Wednesday in an email explaining his vote. 

South Carolina’s primaries are scheduled to be held on June 9, though there is a separate bill that would move them to August. 

Republicans in South Carolina are expected to pass a map that would alter powerful Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn’s district, favoring GOP candidates in all seven districts in the state.

“I urge the General Assembly to finish its work according to the U.S. and South Carolina constitutions and the best interests of the people,” McMaster said after Tuesday’s vote.

Southern states began scrambling to redistrict despite looming primaries after the Supreme Court ruling last month that narrowed the Voting Rights Act. The court said the congressional map enacted in Louisiana in 2021 leaned too heavily on race when redrawing the state’s voting boundaries to comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. 

The Supreme Court ruling was handed down days before early voting was set to start in Louisiana, where 45,000 ballots had already been returned. Republican Gov. Jeff Landry suspended the House primaries as he called a special session to redraw the state’s congressional map.

Louisiana’s state Senate advanced a map on Wednesday that would favor Republicans in five out of six seats. The map moves to the full Senate floor next, but one of the Democratic representatives whose district would be dissolved into several others vowed to fight the measure. 

Alabama’s Republican Gov. Kay Ivey earlier this week rescheduled the primaries in the state’s 2nd, 6th and 7th Congressional Districts after the Supreme Court order halted a previous judicial ruling that had required the state to keep two majority Black districts until 2030. The primaries had been scheduled for May 19. 

Tennessee’s Republican lawmakers last week approved a new congressional map that splits Memphis, a Black-majority city, and the county that encompasses it, Shelby, into three districts, a move that would favor Republicans. The new map would favor Republicans in all nine of the state’s congressional districts.