Racial discrimination exists in many forms. It can be as violent and overt as police brutality or as subtle as lines drawn on a voting map. In the latter case, the act may seem innocuous or technical, but the impact is significant.

Just look at what happened in January 2022. Ahead of the midterm elections, South Carolina’s majority-white and majority-Republican Legislature redrew Congressional District 1 (CD 1) to maintain political power. But it purposefully targeted Black communities to do so. Mapmakers unnecessarily moved thousands of Black voters out of the district in textbook racial sorting.

But the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment forbids the sorting of voters on the basis of their race.

That’s what’s being argued in Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP. The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of South Carolina, Legal Defense Fund (LDF), and Arnold & Porter challenged the map on behalf of the South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and an individual voter, Taiwan Scott.

Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP

South Carolina intentionally discriminated against Black voters in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

In January 2023, a unanimous federal three-judge court ruled that CD 1’s configuration in the 2022 map was unconstitutional because the Legislature sorted Black voters by race, and that therefore South Carolina would have to redraw it. The state appealed the ruling, however, and the Supreme Court is now set to hear oral argument on October 11.

Here’s a closer look at why this redistricting case is so important and what it could mean for Black communities in South Carolina — and across the country.

Redistricting is the process of redrawing the district maps on the basis of which public officials are elected. This process occurs every 10 years to account for new census data and population changes, because the Constitution requires that each district have roughly the same number of voters.

Redistricting can affect election outcomes from the federal to the local level. As a result, it can affect how communities are represented in government and how resources are distributed for health care, education, and infrastructure.

The redistricting process is vulnerable to abuse: it is an opportunity for legislators interested in protecting their seats to pick their preferred voters and to displace disfavored ones. A “gerrymander” refers to a district map that has been drawn to manipulate the outcome of elections. The term was coined in 1812, referring to a salamander-shaped district designed to favor Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry’s political party.

Today, districts are drawn using vast amounts of data, with increasingly sophisticated methods and software that heighten the ability of legislators to pick and choose between voters. This precision enhances the opportunity for gerrymandering.

South Carolina’s Legislature, for example, gerrymandered CD 1 by targeting and drawing Black communities out of the district, “exiling” them to adjacent districts — as the trial court found in the Alexander case.

Gerrymandering, by skewing the composition of a district, can prevent voters’ voices from being heard and unfairly distort election results.

Redistricting and gerrymandering affect all communities, but, in practice, they often have a disproportionate impact on communities of color. That’s because these practices are often employed to limit their ability to vote for representatives who can advocate for their needs and make their voices heard. When legislatures sort by race, as the court found happened in South Carolina, the legislatures also entrench the belief that representatives need only respond to members of a particular group.

How Much Do You Know about Redistricting?

How does redistricting become gerrymandering, and what does that mean for your voting rights? Test your knowledge.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

In South Carolina’s CD 1, gerrymandering prevents voters from accessing representatives who could fight for economic development, affordable housing, healthcare, resources for historically Black colleges and universities, and broadband internet, among many other issues.

South Carolina unlawfully assigned voters to congressional districts based on their race and intentionally discriminated against Black voters. It acted in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbids the sorting of voters on the basis of their race, absent a compelling interest such as satisfying an obligation under the Voting Rights Act. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments also forbid intentional racial discrimination.

In January 2023, a panel of three federal judges unanimously concluded that South Carolina’s congressional map is unconstitutional.

The ACLU works to ensure that redistricting takes place in a fair way that respects all voters and their communities.

In Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, the ACLU is advocating for the implementation of a fair and lawful CD 1 map in time for the 2024 election cycle.

The case is set to be heard at the Supreme Court on October 11. Because the lower court applied settled legal principles and concluded that the CD 1 map was unconstitutional based on extensive evidence, we are confident that the Supreme Court will do the same.

Black voters in CD 1 have already had to vote under an unconstitutional map once in the 2022 midterm elections. They shouldn’t have to endure that injustice in the upcoming 2024 elections, or ever again. We will fight until Black South Carolina voters have a lawful map that fairly represents them.

Voting is a fundamental civil right and it shouldn’t be infringed upon, no matter your race or zip code. Although the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits racially discriminatory voting tactics and policies, including diluting the voting strength of racial minorities, Black people and communities of color in particular continue to face numerous obstacles to voting.

Let’s break down why equal access to voting is critical to the fight for systemic equality.

Having fair and equal representation is the cornerstone of American democracy. Every citizen should have equal access to the ballot box to choose those representatives who will fight for the issues and policies they care about. Having equal access to voting is a civil right that is recognized and protected by the Constitution. The Constitution requires states to apportion their congressional, state, and local electoral districts according to the “one person, one vote” principle, and state legislatures have an obligation to ensure fair and equal representation for all people. These obligations uphold the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection and comply with the requirements of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act (VRA) into law. The VRA was a monumental piece of legislation meant to end state and local voter suppression tactics designed to keep Black and Brown voters from casting ballots.

The Voting Rights Act

Since 1965, the Voting Rights Act (VRA) has protected minority voters at the polls.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

For decades, the Voting Rights Act successfully protected Black, Brown, Indigenous, and other marginalized voters — but 10 years ago, the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder struck down its core “preclearance” requirement, which mandated that jurisdictions with long records of racially discriminatory voting practices seek federal approval before altering their voting laws and practices. On top of this, eight years after Shelby, the Supreme Court weakened another provision of the VRA — Section 2, a nationwide ban on voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or language — making court challenges to discriminatory tactics even harder.

In the years since the Shelby Supreme Court case, states have unleashed a torrent of voter suppression laws that disproportionately impact voters of color. These discriminatory anti-voter efforts continue today and include unnecessary photo ID laws, restraints on voter registration, voter purges, cuts to early voting and vote by mail, documentary proof of citizenship requirements, and polling place closures. Voters across the country continue to face arbitrary restrictions on absentee voting, bans on providing water to voters as they wait in hours-long lines, dropbox limitations, gerrymandering, and other restrictive policies that disproportionately burden marginalized communities.

Every decade, states must redraw district lines at the federal, state, and local levels to balance population shifts. These lines influence who wins elections, which communities are represented, and whose votes can be influential. These district lines determine the electoral boundaries for representation in Congress, state legislatures, and in many county and municipal offices. This process is called redistricting.

The drawing of district lines can dictate not only who runs for public office and who is elected, but also how financial resources are allocated for schools, hospitals, roads and more. The representatives who are elected have the power to make decisions that greatly impact the communities they represent.

Sometimes, people talk about how redistricting can be used to “gerrymander” these electoral district lines. Gerrymandering is the practice of manipulating electoral boundaries to give an unfair political advantage to a particular political party or group. Legislators can gerrymander by cracking specific voters — spreading them thinly across multiple districts — or packing them into as few districts as possible. Those drawing the district lines can use gerrymandering to suppress the voting power of Black, Indigenous and other communities of color.

Communities of color have faced numerous obstacles to meaningful participation in the political process, including the redistricting process. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits the drawing of district lines that dilute the voting strength of communities of color in such a way that prevents them from participating in the political process on equal terms. However, the redistricting process in many states continues to result in district lines that crack and pack Black people and communities of color in ways that minimize their voting strength. As a result, they are not adequately represented in our democracy, perpetuating the systemic inequality many voters of colors already face.

Fifty-Seven Years After its Enactment, the Voting Rights Act is in Peril

On this anniversary of the VRA, the fight to secure the right to vote faces its greatest battles in over a generation.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

Redistricting plans should fairly reflect the political strength of communities of color. As the Census data confirms, nearly all of the country’s growth over the past decade is attributable to the growth in our nation’s communities of color. Fair maps must adequately reflect that reality, and the right to vote should be equally accessible to everyone.

The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would restore and strengthen the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 to its full power after the Supreme Court eviscerated its core protections a decade ago. Since enactment, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been reauthorized and updated five times with large, bipartisan majorities. It is long past time for Congress to put voters first and return to this strong bipartisan tradition that protects every citizen’s right to vote and moves us closer to a democracy that works for all of us.

Had the Supreme Court not gutted the VRA, voters in states and localities with the worst history of voting discrimination would still be protected. These jurisdictions would have had to preclear changes to their voting laws or processes with the federal government, preventing discriminatory changes before they could be implemented and taint an election. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would begin to root out racially-driven voting barriers. This legislation is vital to securing and preserving our fundamental right to vote without encountering racially discriminatory barriers.

Through litigation and advocacy, the ACLU is fighting back against attempts to curtail our right to vote and working to ensure the right to vote is equally accessible to everyone. As part of our ongoing work to ensure that legislatures accurately reflect their constituencies and to obtain more equal representation for Black voters, we’re advocating for fairer voting maps across six states in the South: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. We are continuing to advocate for the passage of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would help strengthen core voting rights protections for all. Additionally, we are fighting for the rights of disenfranchised citizens who live in Florida, Iowa, and Kentucky, states with extreme policies of disenfranchising people with certain felony convictions for life. These states are also among those that disproportionately suppress the voting rights of Black communities.

Florida’s Statewide Prosecution of Voting with a Past Conviction is Unlawful

The state’s confusing voter registration system sets people up to fail and further disenfranchises Black voters.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

The ACLU will continue to fight to ensure the right to vote is equally accessible to everyone. But we can’t do it without you — become a Democracy Defender and join these fights with us.

As a father of two K-12 students, I understand how deeply every parent and school official worries about keeping our kids safe. That critical task means not only keeping them safe from those who may want to harm them, but also providing all the support we can to students who may wish to harm themselves.

Regretfully, I have watched over the years as schools have increasingly turned to student surveillance technologies to keep our children safe. These decisions haunt me because, as an ACLU senior policy counsel focused on privacy, surveillance, and technology issues, I know full well that surveillance does not deter bad conduct, and it certainly does not protect our students. This living surveillance nightmare becomes all the more disturbing when I think about the many proven interventions that schools choose not to invest in, instead spending their limited resources on student surveillance products that do not work.

Why do schools continue to invest in unproven surveillance interventions? Because their decisions far too frequently rely on the marketing materials of those looking to get rich off the sale of student surveillance products: the EdTech Surveillance industry. This over-reliance is somewhat understandable, because school districts have limited expertise in surveillance and have little time to become experts. Moreover, when student surveillance sales pitches are being presented and acquisition decisions are being made, the EdTech Surveillance industry’s salespersons and marketing materials are often the only other voice in the room.

My hope is that will finally stop today.

My cautious optimism is driven by today’s release of the ACLU research report “Digital Dystopia: The Danger in Buying What the EdTech Surveillance Industry is Selling,” which endeavors to definitively pull back the curtain on the EdTech Surveillance industry’s deceptive marketing practices. The report discusses at length how, despite the EdTech Surveillance industry’s assertions to the contrary, there is no reliable and verifiable research demonstrating student surveillance products have a broad, positive impact on improving students’ safety and well-being.

Digital Dystopia: The Danger in Buying What the EdTech Surveillance Industry is Selling

Digital Dystopia: The Danger in Buying What the EdTech Surveillance Industry is Selling, an ACLU research report, examines the EdTech Surveillance...

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

After stoking the fears of educators, parents, students, and other school community members, the EdTech Surveillance industry suggests — while doing their best imitation of a nonprofit — that their only objective is to improve school safety and that their products offer real hope. They engage in this by presenting opinion statements about their products’ efficacy as if they provided reliable, documented proof, and by sprinkling in exaggerated, unverifiable, and flat-out misleading efficacy claims and figures.

Of course, the EdTech Surveillance industry also conveniently fails to discuss the multitude of harms their products cause to students, especially those who are already vulnerable. Fortunately, the ACLU does not share their reluctance towards telling the truth. Instead, our report discusses these harms at length, giving voice to them by quoting researchers, academics, and most importantly, students themselves. From the loss of privacy and trust, to depriving students of their ability to learn, communicate, and associate with one another; student surveillance products are a disaster for positive student development, as well as their civil rights and liberties.

Ultimately, our report offers numerous, concrete actions school districts, elected officials, and community members can take to ensure decisions about student surveillance products are consistent, well-informed, and based on reliable, unbiased information about their highly questionable benefits and significant harms. We believe better decision making will not only result in the more frequent rejection of student surveillance technologies, but also in the selection of interventions that are better suited towards helping and supporting our children.

Piercing the marketing deceptions of a $3.1 billion industry is no small task, and accordingly our report is no small paper. But for responsible school district officials and others who read it, the reward will be a much clearer understanding of the shortcomings and unavoidable harms of student surveillance technologies. That, coupled with our report’s resources, will empower schools to make much better decisions about such technologies, and to ultimately do a better job of keeping our K-12 students safe.