WASHINGTON — The Congressional Black Caucus and NAACP on Tuesday urged pushback against GOP-led redistricting efforts in Southern states via college sports, including a boycott of public universities by athletes and supporters.
U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and fellow Congressional Black Caucus members blasted a bill that sets forth a national framework for college athletes’ compensation. But the CBC’s backlash went beyond just the legislation — which was yanked from the House’s voting schedule this week following unanimous opposition from the major voting bloc.
At a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol, the lawmakers rallied behind the NAACP’s call earlier Tuesday for Black athletes and fans to withhold “athletic and financial support from public universities in states that have moved to limit, weaken, or erase Black voting representation” following the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Louisiana v. Callais.
The decision from the nation’s highest court gutted the federal Voting Rights Act and has prompted a major redistricting push in Southern states that could threaten Black representation in Congress.
Southeastern Conference targeted
“We are here standing in solidarity with the NAACP and its call for athletes to boycott institutions within the (Southeastern Conference) that belong to states that have unleashed these Jim Crow-like racially oppressive tactics, which is unacceptable, unconscionable and un-American,” Jeffries said.
“We believe that the silence of these institutions is complicity, and we will not stand for it,” the New York Democrat added.
The SEC, a major athletic conference under the NCAA, includes several member universities located in states that have joined the redistricting wave. The NAACP pointed to Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas as “eight priority states.”
“In this moment, our democracy is in crisis,” said Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, at Tuesday’s press conference.
“This is not about partisanship — this is about true representation, and for the NAACP, we will fight with all we have in solidarity with the Congressional Black Caucus to ensure that we have representation, or if we don’t, we will withhold the talent that play on the football field or on the basketball court,” he said.
SCORE Act under scrutiny
The Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements, or ‘‘SCORE” Act, seeks to allow compensation but bar student-athletes from being recognized as employees and provide broad antitrust immunity to the NCAA and college sports conferences.
The college sports world continues to grapple with the fallout from the NCAA’s 2021 guidelines, which allowed student-athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness, or NIL.
A federal judge in June 2025 also approved the terms of a nearly $2.8 billion antitrust settlement that paved the way for schools to directly pay athletes.
The college sports landscape is also grappling with gender inequity in NIL deals, a patchwork of state NIL laws, booster collectives and the NCAA’s controversial transfer portal, among other issues.
House GOP leadership had also pulled the SCORE Act from the House floor in December.
In a statement, the CBC said U.S. Reps. Shomari Figures, D-Ala., and Janelle Bynum, D-Ore., two of the bill’s lead sponsors, had been negotiating changes in the legislation to improve it but pulled their support, and the CBC did so as well.
The caucus said its members cannot support legislation that benefits large athletic institutions when their leaders are not speaking out about redistricting that weakens Black representation in government.
“This is not politics as usual. This is a defining moral moment for our country,” the caucus said.
“For generations, Black athletes have helped build college athletics into one of the most powerful and profitable industries in American life. The success, visibility, and cultural influence of major athletic conferences and institutions are inseparable from the talent, labor, leadership, and cultural contributions of Black communities. Yet at the very moment those same communities face coordinated attacks on their democratic representation, too many leaders across college athletics have chosen silence.”
Letters sent
The caucus also said it has sent formal letters to SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner Jim Phillips and NCAA President Charlie Baker “demanding immediate engagement and a public response regarding the ongoing assault on Black political representation throughout the South and across the nation.”
Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette Clarke, a New York Democrat, said the caucus “cannot support legislation benefiting major athletic institutions that continue to remain silent while Black voting rights and Black political power are being systematically dismantled across the South.”
Jeffries noted that “with respect to the SCORE Act, our position has been clear: If LSU is for it, we’re against it. If the University of Alabama is for it, we’re against it. If Ole Miss is for it, we’re against it. If the University of South Carolina is for it, we’re against it. If the University of Tennessee is for it, we’re against it, and if the SEC schools are for it, we are against it.”
Shauneen Miranda is a reporter for States Newsroom’s Washington bureau. An alumna of the University of Maryland, she previously covered breaking news for Axios.
SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
RE-MAPPING SOUTH CAROLINA
House GOP passes new voting lines for SC ahead of court hearing on first lawsuit
BY: JESSICA HOLDMAN AND SEANNA ADCOX - MAY 19, 2026 7:04 PM
Editor’s note: This article was last updated following the House vote.
COLUMBIA — Republicans in the South Carolina House passed a new congressional map hours after voters’ rights groups sued the chamber’s GOP leaders Tuesday to stop the process.
The 74-36 vote at 12:21 a.m. Wednesday embraced a White House-backed plan aimed at securing a Republican clean sweep of South Carolina’s congressional delegation in November.
Four Republicans — Reps. Nathan Ballentine of Chapin, Tom Hartnett of Mount Pleasant, Dennis Moss of Gaffney, and Heath Sessions of Rock Hill — joined Democrats in opposing the quick overhaul just one week before the start of early voting and after the mailing of more than 11,000 absentee ballots. Twelve legislators had excused absences for not voting. One Republican in the chamber over two full days of debate didn’t vote on the bill itself.
The House then adjourned and, since it was after midnight, immediately reconvened as the next day to take the perfunctory vote needed to send the bill to the Senate. With that final vote at 12:39 a.m., representatives went home to await what senators do with the bill.
The full Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled a public hearing for Wednesday afternoon. But before that, a judge was to hear initial arguments in a lawsuit that seeks to invalidate the House’s mid-debate change to the rules. The hearing at 9 a.m. Wednesday in Richland County Court could put the process on pause pending a ruling.
Democrats said they expect the lawsuit to be the first of many against efforts to redraw South Carolina’s congressional lines.
Opponents criticized Republicans for upending an election already underway to rush through a map made without any input from South Carolinians. That includes GOP leaders, who told their colleagues a day before circulating the White House-endorsed map that they hadn’t seen one yet.
House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, D-Columbia, noted it’s based off 6-year-old census data in one of the nation’s fastest growing states.
“What you all are doing is wrong,” said Rep. JA Moore.
“You can justify it, rationalize it, but it’s wrong,” the North Charleston Democrat added.
The rules change
The state chapters of the League of Women Voters and American Civil Liberties Union sued Tuesday over the way GOP leaders dispensed with more than 500 of Democrats’ proposed changes.
To end the potential of debate dragging on indefinitely, the House Rules Committee adopted new rules Monday night limiting every legislator to one amendment and debate on each to three minutes. The full House then voted 73-33 on a resolution that put the changes in place for the duration of the debate.
A judge, however, could require all discarded amendments to be heard.
“The League wants to see public transparency in the process because it’s just so important,” league lobbyist Lynn Teague said of the lawsuit’s goal.
The lawsuit alleges the hastily called meeting violated the state Freedom of Information Act, which requires public notice of meetings at least 24 hours in advance.
Notice of the meeting was posted just eight minutes before the committee convened, and the meeting ended before reporters could make it to the room.
House Speaker Murrell Smith told his colleagues the open meetings law doesn’t apply to the House Rules Committee.
“This is not a committee for the public,” the Sumter Republican said in overriding legislators’ complaints Monday night. “Internal workings of the House are not subject to FOIA.”
The lawsuit argues his ruling on the chamber floor, if left unchallenged, would set a bad precedent that allows “legislative committees to conduct consequential public business in secret.”
The groups also allege the meeting violated FOIA because the late notice lacked details. And, while meetings needed for “emergency or exigent circumstances” can avoid the 24-hour rule, no one pointed to that as a reason, and it wouldn’t apply anyway, according to the lawsuit.
“Any urgency was manufactured by Republicans in the House who became frustrated by members whose debate and proposed amendments slowed Republicans’ attempts to steamroll the passage of the bill,” the lawsuit reads.
On Monday, it took Republicans 10 hours to get through nine amendments. On Tuesday, following the rule change, they rejected dozens of amendments over several hours in an effort to adopt a map drafted by the National Republican Redistricting Trust.
Debate on the bill itself then continued late into the night. The resolution allowed each representative to speak either for or against the bill for up to 10 minutes.
The 26 legislators who spoke in opposition included just one Republican.
The six Republicans who went to the lectern in support included Rules Committee Chairman Micah Caskey of West Columbia, who argued the resolution actually preserved debate.
“I understand the temptations of politics, but to those who are willing to be intellectually honest, you know that the suggestion that this resolution prevented debate is empty,” he said, while not addressing the lawsuit.
“No legislative body can operate that way,” he said about allowing indefinite debate as Democrats kept adding to the stack of amendments.
While the specially enacted rules limited members to one amendment, they had the option to redraft or introduce a new one that combined multiple proposals, he said.
“This was not a content restriction. It was merely a vehicle restriction,” said Caskey, the last legislator to speak on the bill.
“Amendments matter. Debate matters. The right of every member to be heard matters,” he added. “And the obligation of the House to eventually take a vote matters, too.”
Then at roughly 8:45 p.m., with a vote seemingly imminent, Rep. Rosalyn Henderson-Myers, D-Spartanburg, invoked a rule allowing any legislator to have an entire bill read aloud. Legislators had to sit in their seats as Reading Clerk Bubba Cromer read the 110-page bill of precinct names, block numbers, and their populations.
The reading lasted about 3 ½ hours, which included multiple interruptions from legislators tattle-telling on each other for not being in their assigned seat — ostensibly to pay attention to the succession of numbers.
Points of order included whether legislators were allowed to eat at their desk or go to the bathroom after the chamber’s doors to the lobby were shut to keep them inside.
The debate
Amendments that received “no” votes during the debate included proposals to automatically send out absentee ballots to voters who requested them for the first round, move the lines so that downtown Columbia and Clemson aren’t in the same district, and mail notices to all registered voters moved to a different congressional district because of the redraw.
Rep. Beth Bernstein asked lawmakers to approve voter education via text message alerts, direct mail, signage at polling places, a toll-free hotline for questions and social media outreach.
“When confusion becomes a barrier, a barrier becomes silence, and silence becomes a vote that was never cast,” the Columbia Democrat said.
Rep. Wendell Jones, D-Piedmont, urged his colleagues to think about what “should be done” for the long-term good rather than what’s possible for the midterms.
“This debate has been bigger than politics. It’s bigger than who wins the next election. This debate is about legitimacy,” he said. “And when people lose faith in the legitimacy of their institutions, the foundation of our democracy begins to crack.”
Hartnett, among the four Republicans who ultimately voted “no” opposed how the new map lumped together differing coastal economies. The overhaul would put much of Charleston County in the 7th District with Myrtle Beach. But the state’s port in Charleston Harbor shouldn’t be in the same district as the tourism-focused economy of the Grand Strand, he said.
“I was elected to defend the interests of my district, even if that means standing alone,” said Hartnett, the only Republican who used his 10 allowed minutes to oppose the bill. “I cannot support a map that weakens Charleston County voices, dilutes the Lowcountry’s influence, and places our region at a disadvantage when competing for federal resources.”
But Rep. Robby Robbins, R-Summerville, said the proposed map actually does a better job than the existing lines of keeping together rural communities, giving them a stronger voice politically, while splitting fewer counties statewide. Dorchester County, where he lives, would be part of the remade coastal 1st District that extends south to include all of Beaufort and Jasper counties.
Rep. Luke Rankin, the bill’s lead sponsor, called it “completely reasonable” to redraw the districts to flip the one seat safely drawn decades ago for a Democrat in a state dominated by Republicans.
“This debate is about far more than just South Carolina people,” said the Laurens County Republican. “The trajectory of our entire country is at stake. The balance of power in Congress is incredibly narrow and what we do today could ensure that Republicans keep a majority.”
Cost to taxpayers
The House measure would delay primaries until Aug. 18 for the state’s seven U.S. House seats. But as ballots have already been printed, the candidates’ names will still appear on June 9 ballots.
As of Tuesday, the state Election Commission had already mailed out 11,300 absentee ballots to voters, including military service members stationed overseas.
The state will spend an estimated $3.5 million to run a second set of primaries.
That estimate does not include costs incurred by county elections offices for expenses not covered by the state.
Rep. Roger Kirby, D-Lake City, said the state should help counties cover the bill, which elections officials expect will run counties hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Estimates provided to the state Election Commission by county offices include $526,000 in Charleston County, $124,000 in Greenville and $443,000 in Richland.
In Florence County, where Kirby lives, estimates came to about $202,000.
Meanwhile, the state spent at least $203,000 on pay for House members during the special session. The cost will increase with senators’ return to Columbia.
The effort to redraw South Carolina’s lines to create seven Republican seats followed a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that threw out Louisiana’s congressional map, striking down a majority-Black congressional district as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
Supporters say it’s necessary to “un-gerrymander” the state’s only district held by a Democrat, the 6th District. Longtime U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn has held the seat since voters elected him in 1992.
Opponents pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled in 2024 that South Carolina’s map, redrawn after the 2020 census, was partisan, not racially, gerrymandered.
And some members of both parties have questioned the wisdom of targeting Clyburn, who has helped secure massive federal investments over his 34 years in office.
“The consequences do not end with politics,” Henderson-Myers said. “The consequences will affect real people across our state.”
Congressional representation can decide South Carolina’s share of federal dollars for rural health care, maternal health, education, roads and bridges and small businesses, the Spartanburg Democrat added.
“And more importantly, it will impact whether our constituents continue to believe that their voices matter in our democracy,” Henderson-Myers said.
Jessica Holdman writes about the economy, workforce and higher education. Before joining the SC Daily Gazette, she was a business reporter for The Post and Courier.
Seanna Adcox is a South Carolina native with three decades of reporting experience. After covering the S.C. Legislature and state politics for 18 years. she launched the SC Daily Gazette in November 2023 as the 37th state affiliate under the States Newsroom umbrella. Her previous employers include The Post and Courier and The Associated Press.
SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
Clyburn Joins MS NOW The Weeknight to Discuss Redistricting in South Carolina
WASHINGTON, DC — On Tuesday, May 19, Congressman James E. Clyburn of South Carolina joined MS NOW’s The Weeknight to discuss redistricting in South Carolina. A transcript of the interview can be found below:
Alicia Menendez: “Congressman, Governor McMaster was asked why he changed course on redistricting. He said he supports redrawing the lines to help create a functioning Congress that can pass laws without a one or two vote margin. Your response to the Governor?”
Clyburn: “I was disappointed in that. I was led like everybody else – who was led to believe that the Governor would respect what the Supreme Court did two years ago, because they looked at this district, and they declared that the district was in fact constitutional.
“It had been legally drawn and it had two constitutional principles, and the Governor indicated that throughout this whole process. And so when the Senate decided to not make redistricting a part of its sine die resolution, I like everybody else – well maybe not everybody – but most other people, thought that the Governor would adhere to that.
“But within 24 hours he changed his tune, and I guess we all have the right to change our minds.
“Disappointed, but not surprised.”
[…]
Clyburn: “South Carolina is a state that votes statewide for the Democratic ticket around 43% of the vote. In my congressional district, is a 45% African American district, and I’ve been getting 59 and 64 percent of the vote. So if it’s only 45% African American, then that must mean that I’m getting some votes from people who are not African American, and that’s a fact.
“I’m supported by Blacks and whites, Democrats and Republicans, and Independents.”
[…]
###
THE LATEST
Judge declines to stop redistricting, says FOIA doesn’t apply to SC House rule changes
BY: JESSICA HOLDMAN - MAY 20, 2026 3:42 PM
COLUMBIA — A Circuit Court judge denied a request from voters’ rights groups to wind back the clock on South Carolina’s congressional redistricting debate, saying House leaders were within their powers to follow their own rules as they pushed to redraw voting lines.
The Freedom of Information Act provisions cited in the lawsuit don’t even apply to the challenged House resolution, Judge Daniel Coble wrote.
That’s because the state constitution empowers the General Assembly to set its own rules of procedure, “free from interference from the judicial and executive branches,” reads his ruling.
It came five hours after lawyers for the South Carolina chapters of the League of Women Voters and American Civil Liberties Union squared off Wednesday with House Republicans’ attorneys in the Richland County Courthouse.
The challenge “raises a purely political question” and “judicial intervention would violate well-established separation of powers principles” between the legislative and judicial branches, Coble wrote in his ruling, agreeing with House GOP arguments.
The hearing was on an emergency request to pause the process pending a decision on the lawsuit’s allegations.
Attorney Kathleen McDaniel, who represented the suing groups, called it perplexing that Coble went further to rule FOIA doesn’t apply to House meeting notices.
“That’s a pretty dangerous decision,” she said. An appeal is possible, since the ruling “could have far-reaching consequences that go beyond this.”
In court, McDaniel told the judge that GOP leaders committed “a shocking violation of open government” to speed up debate and dispense with more than 500 of Democrats’ proposed changes to legislation to redraw congressional districts.
She ultimately wanted Coble to declare that House leaders violated the state’s Freedom of information Act and to reset the clock on the state’s redistricting debate.
That would have voided mid-debate rule changes, as well as a pair of after-midnight House votes that passed the legislation and sent it to the Senate.
“A lot of damage has been done,” McDaniel told the judge. “However, that can be undone by you.”
The legislators’ lawyer argued the meeting was an internal matter of House rules, making it Speaker Murrell Smith’s prerogative.
“They followed their rules,” attorney Michael Parente said. “The court can’t second guess the judgement of the General Assembly on their rules.”
State open meetings law requires public notice of meetings at least 24 hours in advance. The lawsuit alleged a hastily called gathering of the House Rules Committee violated that statute.
On Monday, it took Republicans 10 hours to get through nine amendments on the mid-decade redistricting map drafted by the National Republican Redistricting Trust.
To end the potential of debate dragging on indefinitely, the House Rules Committee adopted new rules at 7:15 p.m. Monday limiting every legislator to one amendment and debate on each to three minutes. The resolution, adopted by the full House, also allowed up to 10 minutes for any legislator to speak in opposition or support before the chamber voted on the bill itself.
The committee posted notice of the meeting to adopt those rules just eight minutes before it convened, and the meeting ended before reporters could make it to the room.
Republicans’ in-court argument echoed Smith’s ruling on the floor. Responding to complaints from legislators, Smith said the open meetings law doesn’t apply to the House Rules Committee.
“This is not a committee for the public,” the Sumter Republican said in overriding their motions. “Internal workings of the House are not subject to FOIA.”
Coble agreed, despite McDaniel’s argument that the House’s self-made rules “can’t contradict state law.”
The effort to redraw South Carolina’s lines to send seven Republicans to Congress — flipping the lone seat that’s reliably blue — followed a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that threw out Louisiana’s congressional map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
Supporters say it’s necessary to “un-gerrymander” the state’s 6th District, which U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn has held since voters first elected him in 1992.
But opponents argue the U.S. Supreme Court has already rejected claims that South Carolina’s map is racially gerrymandered. Justices’ 2024 ruling found that precincts were moved between the 1st and 6th districts following the 2020 census for partisan, not racial, reasons — basically, to make the coastal 1st District a safe Republican seat again.
And unlike Louisiana and other states tackling mid-decade redistricting, South Carolina no longer has a majority-minority district. A federal court’s 1992 overhaul of South Carolina’s congressional map created a majority-minority 6th District — enabling Clyburn to become the first Black South Carolinian elected to Congress in a century. But changes in population and post-census redistricting since have shrunk the district’s Black population to less than half.
Jessica Holdman writes about the economy, workforce and higher education. Before joining the SC Daily Gazette, she was a business reporter for The Post and Courier.
SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
