South Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice John Kittredge warned Wednesday about the perils of extreme gerrymandering that could allow one dominant party to choose all of a state’s Congressional representatives and ride roughshod over voters in the minority party by denying them representation in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Kittredge made his observations in a concurring, or supporting, opinion in a unanimous 5-0 high court decision on redistricting made public Wednesday.
The case was called League of Women Voters of South Carolina vs. Thomas Alexander, president of the S.C. Senate; Murrell Smith, House speaker; and Howard Knapp, director of the State Election Commission. Gov. Henry McMaster intervened on the side of the lawmakers.
The decision rejected an effort by the League of