Maps discussed by a North Dakota legislative redistricting committee are displayed at a meeting in December 2023. (Photo by Kyle Martin/For the North Dakota Monitor)
BISMARCK, N.D. (North Dakota Monitor) – The U.S. Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act ruling doesn’t immediately impact North Dakota’s redistricting case involving the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and Spirit Lake Nation, according to the North Dakota Attorney General’s Office.
The decision, issued Wednesday, makes it much harder to challenge district maps over allegations that they dilute the voting power of minority groups — which is key to the tribes’ ongoing lawsuit against North Dakota.
For the time being, however, the redistricting case hinges on a separate procedural question: whether private citizens and groups are allowed to bring lawsuits under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Section 2 outlaws racially discriminatory voting practices.
The tribes and two tribal citizens used that law to sue North Dakota over a district map approved by the Legislature in 2021. The tribes say the map shifted district lines in a way that made it harder for their communities to elect legislative candidates of their choice.
A federal judge sided with the tribes and imposed a different voting map, but the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals court last year overturned the ruling on the basis that only the U.S. Department of Justice can file lawsuits alleging violations of Section 2.
The 8th Circuit is the only appellate circuit in the country to rule this way.
The tribes appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court last year, and asked the high court to settle whether the law can only be enforced by the federal government. It has yet to make a decision in the case.
The justices’ decision in Louisiana v. Callais on Wednesday did not speak to how the court will ultimately come down on that question, said Kareem Crayton, a vice president at the Brennan Center for Justice.
“It doesn’t really give us a real clue as to whether those claims can only be brought by the Justice Department,” he said of the ruling.
For now, North Dakota U.S. District Court Judge Peter Welte’s district map, which he directed the state to adopt in early 2024, remains in effect. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh last year placed a temporary hold on the 8th Circuit’s decision overturning Welte’s ruling, which has not been lifted.
Even if the court does something to change that, it would not change legislative district lines for the 2026 election in North Dakota. The state must finalize its maps by December before an election year, the state said in a brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The U.S. Supreme Court has not agreed to hear the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and Spirit Lake Nation’s lawsuit. It’s extremely rare for the high court to agree to review a case.
Crayton said there are multiple ways the Supreme Court could handle the lawsuit.
It could reject the appeal outright, agree to hear arguments on the case or send the suit back down to Welte for further proceedings, for example, he said.
“They may direct the court to consider the decision on the merits in light of the new standards that have been set in Callais,” Crayton said. “When you announce a new sort of standard of law, things that are in the pipeline that have not reached final resolution get sent back.”
The Wednesday decision, authored by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by the court’s other five conservative justices, significantly limits states’ ability to consider race when drawing legislative maps. Previously, courts had interpreted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to forbid states from adopting any maps that reduce minority groups’ voting power, whether deliberate or accidental. The Supreme Court on Wednesday found that in order to be found in violation of Section 2, there must be sufficient evidence that a state chose the map with the intent to discriminate based on race.
The decision will make cases like the North Dakota redistricting lawsuit “fundamentally harder to prove,” Crayton said.
“It generally, even under existing law, is tough to find evidence of intentional discrimination,” he said.
North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley in a Wednesday statement applauded the Supreme Court’s ruling, saying it “strengthens North Dakota’s position that the Constitution is colorblind.”
North Dakota Native Vote Field Organizer Dakota Walking Hawk on Wednesday evening called the decision a major setback for voting rights.
“The Voting Rights Act — that helped Native Americans get our rights to vote,” Walking Hawk said. “That is a big part of the voter history of Native Americans.”
Two legal groups representing the tribes in the North Dakota case, the Native American Rights Fund and the Campaign Legal Center, said Wednesday they could not yet comment on how the Supreme Court’s decision will impact the lawsuit.
Both condemned the court’s ruling generally, saying the decision stripped the Voting Rights Act of its power to enforce racial equality in voting.
“Taking away voting protections, like what happened with today’s decision, makes it harder and at times impossible for Native voters to elect representatives who will respond to their needs,” the Native American Rights Fund said in a joint statement with the National Congress of American Indians.
Background
The North Dakota lawsuit concerns two state legislative districts in northern North Dakota — District 9 and District 15.
The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and Spirit Lake Nation argue that North Dakota’s 2021 district map diluted the power of Native voters by changing the District 9 and District 15 lines.
In 2021, the Turtle Mountain Reservation was placed in a new subdistrict of District 9 and the Spirit Lake Nation was placed in District 15. In 2022, District 9 only elected one candidate preferred by Native voters, and District 15 elected none, the plaintiffs have argued in court records.
Welte sought to correct this in his 2024 map by placing both reservations into District 9. In 2024, three Native candidates from District 9 were elected to the statehouse.
Attorneys for the state of North Dakota maintain that the 2021 map is not discriminatory. In previous court filings, attorneys for the state argued that private groups should not be able to bring lawsuits under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act on the grounds that it destabilizes state district maps. The state wants the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the 8th Circuit’s decision overruling Welte’s findings.
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