The conservative majority on the Supreme Court appeared to favor arguments made Wednesday by South Carolina in a racial gerrymandering case brought against the state by Black voters, signaling perhaps a renewed skepticism of the Voting Rights Act at the high court.

The case, Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, was brought by Black voters in South Carolina who alleged that the state engaged in illegal racial gerrymandering by moving 30,000 Black voters out of a congressional district ahead of the 2022 elections.

At the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, a three-judge panel unanimously ruled in favor of the voters, finding that race was a “predominant motivating factor in the General Assembly’s design” of the state’s first district, represented by Congresswoman Nancy Mace.

Chief Justice Roberts voiced a skepticism apparently shared by his conservative colleagues to the voters’ argument, saying that the challengers to the map failed to provide any “direct evidence,” adding, “Have we ever had a case before where all [of] it is circumstantial evidence?”

Justice Roberts added that the voters brought the case “with no alternative map, with no odd-shape districts which we often get in gerrymandering cases.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett appeared to agree with Justice Roberts, saying that the voters who brought the case needed to meet an “exceedingly heavy” burden of proof to overcome the court’s presumption that South Carolina legislators acted in good faith.

Justice Neil Gorsuch also appeared sympathetic to the state’s argument that the lower court failed to disentangle race from politics when it ruled against the state. Representatives for the state argued that the maps were drawn to ensure a “stronger Republican tilt” rather than to disenfranchise Black voters.

“Here there’s no evidence the legislature could have achieved its partisan tilt in any other way,” Justice Gorsuch said.

Liberals on the high court, like Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, noted during arguments that the voters are not required to produce a “smoking gun,” showing that race was the primary factor the state used in sorting voters.

Because the state would need new maps before 2024 if its current maps are found to be unconstitutional, the court is expected to deliver a ruling by the end of the year.

This is one of a series of racial gerrymandering cases heard by the high court that could affect the battle for the House of Representatives in 2024. A recent win in a case from Alabama, for one, could net Democrats a seat in that state, and they could also gain another in Louisiana.

The skepticism of the case brought by Black South Carolina voters could also signal a renewed skepticism of the Voting Rights Act at the high court. Justice Roberts has had a career-long interest in narrowing the interpretation of the Voting Rights Act.

In a 1981 memo sent to members of the Senate following the passage of a bill to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, Justice Roberts wrote, “Violations of Section 2,” the section guaranteeing racial and linguistic minorities the right to proportional electoral representation, “should not be made too easy to prove.”

In Mr. Robert’s opinion, he wrote that “they provide a basis for the most intrusive interference imaginable by federal courts into state and local processes.” 

In one landmark ruling in 2013, Justice Roberts led the court’s conservative majority in a decision that struck down the pre-clearance provision of the Voting Rights Act, which requires 15 states with a history of discrimination in voting to receive approval from the federal government before changing the way they conduct elections.

While some recent victories for voters in racial gerrymandering cases, such as Cooper v. Harris, which saw Associate Justice Clarence Thomas join the court’s liberals to rule a racially gerrymandered map unconstitutional, signaled that movement to weaken the Voting Rights Act might be slowing, a ruling in favor of South Carolina could show that the Court’s conservatives remain willing to narrow the scope of the act.