Columbia, South Carolina - A federal court said a South Carolina congressional map already adjudged to be unconstitutional can stay in place this year's elections, the consequences of which "will be felt for years," civil rights advocates said.

The decision issued by the South Carolina District Court left in place the map drawn up by Republicans in for the state's 1st Congressional District, despite previously finding it to be an "unconstitutional racial gerrymander."

In explaining the move acknowledged as "unusual," the three judges on the panel essentially said their hands were tied by the US Supreme Court's inaction on the case.

South Carolina state officials had appealed the federal court's ruling, and even though oral arguments were heard as early as October last year, the seven justices have still not decided the matter.

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With the South Carolina primary just over two months away, it is now too late to change the district's map, the federal court said Thursday.

In 2022, some 30,000 Black residents of Charleston were moved to a different district in order to blatantly gerrymander a strong White Republican majority.

"In service of that racial target, the state legislature, 'bleached' Charleston, in the words of the court, by selectively targeting areas lived in by many Black voters for movement out of the congressional district," Sophia Lin Lakin of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a co-plaintiff in the case, said in 2023.

On Thursday, the ACLU slammed the Supreme Court's silence and warned that "the consequences of [the congressional map] on political representation will be felt for years."

Republican Nancy Mace, the current representative for South Carolina's 1st District, was elected in 2020 by a razor-thin margin. Two years later and under the redrawn map, she easily won re-election by over 15%.