Washington — On Monday, the Supreme Court directed lower courts to revisit two significant cases that examine whether private individuals and groups have the authority to sue under a crucial part of the Voting Rights Act aimed at preventing discriminatory voting practices.
In brief orders, the Supreme Court nullified previous lower court rulings and remanded the cases for further evaluation, taking into account its recent significant decision that weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson expressed her dissent.
The core issue in these legal disputes is determining who has the standing to file federal lawsuits addressing possible breaches of Section 2. These cases represent a fresh challenge to the 1965 law and could significantly limit who is eligible to enforce it. If future rulings uphold these constraints, it could diminish the landmark voting law’s effectiveness, which has long been hailed as a cornerstone of the civil rights movement, and restrict voting rights groups and individual voters from pursuing legal action against purported violations.
The ongoing legal battle concerning Section 2 reached the Supreme Court through two separate cases contesting legislative maps drawn in Mississippi and North Dakota following the 2020 census, alleging they violated Section 2.
The case from Mississippi was initiated by the state’s NAACP chapter alongside 14 voters, while the North Dakota case involved the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, the Spirit Lake Tribe, and three Native American voters. Both groups had favorable outcomes at the district court level.
North Dakota officials contested the district court’s decision, leading to an appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. The Appeals Court concluded that Section 2 cannot be enforced by private plaintiffs through a different civil rights statute, known as Section 1983, which allows individuals to sue government officials in federal court for alleged rights violations.
In siding with North Dakota officials, the three-judge panel from the 8th Circuit applied an earlier ruling in which it held that when Congress crafted the Voting Rights Act, it only intended for the attorney general, not private parties, to enforce Section 2. The 8th Circuit’s decision covered only the states within its region: Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.
But lawyers for the Native American tribes argued that its ruling departs from more than 40 years of unbroken practice of individuals suing in courts throughout the country to vindicate their rights under Section 2.
A review of cases brought under Section 2 by Ellen Katz, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, found that since 1982, private plaintiffs have been party to 96.4% of Section 2 claims that led to published decisions and the only litigants in 86.7% of those opinions.
Additionally, from 1982 to early 2024, private plaintiffs brought more than 400 cases alleging violations of Section 2 that have led to judicial decisions, while the Department of Justice brought more than 40, government lawyers under former President Joe Biden’s administration said in 2024.
“Everywhere else in the nation, private plaintiffs can rely on an unbroken line of Supreme Court and circuit precedent to enforce the individual rights given to them by Congress in the Voting Rights Act. But not in the Eighth Circuit,” lawyers for the tribes wrote in a Supreme Court filing.
The appeals court, they said, “extinguished the remaining pathway for private enforcement of Section 2 of the VRA within its bounds.”
Meanwhile, the Mississippi case was decided by a three-judge panel, allowing state officials to directly appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.
Echoing the 8th Circuit’s decision, Mississippi officials argued that Congress provided a mechanism enforcing Section 2: lawsuits filed by the attorney general.
“Although Congress had ambitious aims for the Voting Rights Act, its ambitions did not extend to buoying private litigation,” they wrote in a filing. “Congress had seen that private litigation had failed to vindicate voting rights. It steered a new course in the VRA — embracing powerful remedies, but not private enforcement.”
