Supreme Court Orders Lower Courts to Reconsider Two Voting Rights Act Cases

U.S. Supreme Court on May 18 ordered lower courts to reconsider decisions in two redistricting cases from Mississippi and North Dakota. The unsigned orders direct the courts to review whether private individuals and groups may sue to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

The court acted in light of its April 29 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which held that race may not be the predominant factor when drawing congressional district lines. The Mississippi and North Dakota cases involve challenges to state legislative maps drawn after the 2020 census.

In the North Dakota case, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, the Spirit Lake Tribe, and three Native American voters sued state officials. They argued that the 2021 redistricting reduced the number of majority-Indian districts from three to one, diluting voting power under Section 2.

U.S. C. Section 1983. The district court had previously sided with the plaintiffs. In the Mississippi case, the NAACP and 14 voters challenged legislative districts, claiming that some Senate and House districts violated Section 2 by cracking cohesive Black populations.

A three-judge federal panel ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and ordered the legislature to redraw the map.

The Supreme Court used the GVR procedure, which stands for grant, vacate, and remand, to send both cases back without oral argument. The court did not issue written explanations for the orders. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented in both cases. She wrote that the April 29 Louisiana decision did not address the private enforceability of Section 2 and saw no basis for vacating the lower court judgments.

“This case presents only the question of Section 2’s private enforceability, which our decision in Louisiana v. Callais ... did not address. ”

The Mississippi case reached the Supreme Court on direct appeal from the three-judge panel. The North Dakota case came after the Eighth Circuit reversed the district court ruling. Both sets of plaintiffs had prevailed at the district court level before the appeals process.

The disputes center on whether Congress intended only the attorney general to enforce Section 2 or whether private parties may also bring lawsuits under the provision or through Section 1983.