Redistricting and Census

In February 2022, the South Carolina Conference of the NAACP sued Thomas Alexander, in his official capacity as president of the South Carolina Senate, arguing a new redistricting map was racially gerrymandered in violation of 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution.

A pair of blockbuster redistricting cases from the Supreme Court were scrutinized during a session at NCSL’s Legislative Summit. At least for the moment, the cases settle the status of two prominent legal theories that play key roles in redistricting.

On this episode, Ben Williams from NCSL talks about the latest legal developments around redistricting and the efforts in 13 states to reallocate inmate data from rural prisons to the communities where the inmates came from. 

There are several methods of measuring the extent to which populations of all the districts in a plan vary, or differ collectively from the "ideal." The method expressed in this document is "Overall Range."

Policies to address representational imbalances caused by the Census Bureau’s “usual residence” rule are known to some as “ending prison gerrymandering”; others call it, more neutrally, “inmate data reallocation.”

Ahead of their 2023 legislative sessions, lawmakers expect to address the need for affordable housing, a strong child care workforce and adoption regulations.