October 26th 2023.
Leah Aden is the leading advocate in South Carolina's fight against redistricting, and her impressive oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court marked the case as a textbook example of racial gerrymandering. Despite the tough questions posed by the justices, Aden remained determined and confident in her mission to make an impact.
"I’ve always wanted to do impact work," she said. "I’ve lived with this case from the ground up."
The U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina unanimously found in January 2023 that the state’s legislature was attempting to diminish Black voting power. Thousands of Black residents in Charleston were being moved around from District 1, where Republican Rep. Nancy Mace holds the seat, to District 6, historically represented by Rep. James Clyburn, the state’s sole Black congressman. As a result, South Carolina’s governor Henry McMaster signed a new map passed by South Carolina’s General Assembly into law in January 2022, prompting backlash from civil rights advocates.
Aden reminded the lower court’s finding of “stark racial gerrymandering”, arguing that state lawmakers were “consistently looking at race because they had an expectation that race was a predictor of how political parties would perform.” She went on to say “In light of the total record, it reflects that there was a racial target, it reflects that there was a significant sorting of Black people.”
The Washington, D.C. native is a part of a small but mighty group of oralists and follows in the footsteps of legendary LDF lawyers including the late Constance Baker Motley, and Christina Swarns, head of the Innocence Project. She is a proud student of Black law and education, and believes that education is the ultimate equalizer.
As the case was filed on behalf of the South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, a Hilton Head Island member of the historic Gullah Geechee community, Aden was hopeful and looked forward to the Supreme Court’s decision. “There are congressional elections next year, and every election where our clients don’t have their rights respected is one election too many.”
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