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The Supreme Court on Thursday halted an appeals ruling that prevents private groups from challenging election maps under the Voting Rights Act in seven states.
Neither the majority nor the three public dissenters — conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — explained their reasoning.
The case arose from a lawsuit brought by two Native American tribes, who argue that North Dakota’s state legislative map denied them an equal opportunity to elect their candidates of choice.
The case entered the national spotlight after an 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled 2-1 that the tribes and other private parties have no legal right to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. It mimicked an earlier 8th Circuit ruling concerning a redistricting case in Arkansas.
The Supreme Court’s emergency ruling lifts the 8th Circuit’s ruling until any appeals are resolved. It does not reflect the court’s final decision on the matter.
It comes as the justices prepare to rehear a major redistricting case in Louisiana next term, which legal observers have closely watched as several conservative justices signal a desire to make it more difficult to bring Voting Rights Act lawsuits.
The high court has not yet announced the legal question it will consider when it rehears the case.
The tribes, backed by the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, argued the 8th Circuit’s recent decision is at odds with decades of history and takes away a key pathway to challenge discrimination in the seven states the 8th Circuit covers.
“They likewise contradict every circuit court and three-judge district court—all unanimous unlike the divided decision below—ever to have considered the question of private enforcement of Section 2,” the tribes wrote in court filings.
North Dakota urged the justices to turn away the appeal, stressing the tribes’ “assumptions are not holdings.”
“And the fact that Section 2’s private enforceability was not previously challenged does not mean Congress spoke with the clarity needed to create a privately enforceable right, as members of the Court have recognized,” the state wrote in court filings.
