July 7, 2025:
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A federal appeals court won’t reconsider its decision in a redistricting case that went against two Native American tribes that challenged North Dakota’s legislative redistricting map, and the dispute could be headed for the U.S. Supreme Court.
The case has drawn national interest because of a 2-1 ruling issued in May 2025 by a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that erased a path through the federal Voting Rights Act for people in seven states to sue under a key provision of the landmark federal civil rights law. The tribes argued that the 2021 map violated the act by diluting their voting strength and ability to elect their own candidates.
The panel said only the U.S. Department of Justice can bring such lawsuits. That followed a 2023 ruling out of Arkansas in the same circuit that also said private individuals can’t sue under Section 2 of the law.
Those rulings conflict with decades of rulings by appellate courts in other federal circuits that have affirmed the rights of private individuals to sue under Section 2, creating a split that the Supreme Court may be asked to resolve. However, several of the high court’s conservative justices recently have indicated interest in making it harder, if not impossible, to bring redistricting lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act.
After the May decision, the Spirit Lake Tribe and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians asked the appeals court for a rehearing before all 11 judges. Attorneys general of 19 states, numerous former U.S. Justice Department attorneys, several voting rights historians and others also asked for a rehearing.
But in a ruling Thursday, the full court denied the request, which was filed by the Native American Rights Fund and other groups representing the tribes. Three judges said they would have granted it, including Circuit Chief Judge Steven Colloton, who had dissented in the previous ruling.
The majority opinion in May said that for the tribes to sue under the Voting Rights Act, the law would have had to “unambiguously” give private persons or groups the right to do so.
Lenny Powell, a staff attorney for the fund, said in a statement that the refusal to reconsider “wrongly restricts voters disenfranchised by a gerrymandered redistricting map” from challenging that map.
Powell said Monday that the tribes are now considering their legal options.
Another group representing the tribes, the Campaign Legal Center, said the ruling is “contrary to both the intent of Congress in enacting the law and to decades of Supreme Court precedent affirming voters’ power to enforce the law in court.”
The office of North Dakota Secretary of State Michael Howe did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
The groups said they will continue to fight to ensure fair maps. The North Dakota and Arkansas rulings apply only in the states of the 8th Circuit: Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. In the wake of the Arkansas decision, Minnesota and other states have moved to shore up voting rights with state-level protections to plug the growing gaps in the federal law.
The North Dakota tribes filed their lawsuit in 2022. The three-judge panel heard appeal arguments last October after Republican Secretary of State Michael Howe appealed a lower court’s November 2023 decision in favor of the tribes.
In that ruling, U.S. District Judge Peter Welte ordered creation of a new district that encompassed both tribes’ reservations, which are about 60 miles (97 kilometers) apart. In 2024, voters elected members from both tribes, all Democrats, to the district’s Senate seat and two House seats.
Republicans hold supermajority control of North Dakota’s Legislature.
May 15, 2025:
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A federal appeals court that already has said private individuals and groups cannot sue under a key part of the federal Voting Rights Act went even further Wednesday (May 14, 2025) toward blocking lawsuits over alleged racial bias in voting in seven Midwest states.
But its decisions may not be the last word, because another appeals court has ruled differently, and the U.S. Supreme Court might have to resolve the conflict. The latest ruling reversed a legal victory for two tribal nations in North Dakota that challenged a legislative redistricting plan.
The ruling shuts off a route to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act through a federal civil rights law known as Section 1983, which allows people to sue state officials to vindicate their federal or constitutional rights, said Jonathan Topaz, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union Voting Rights Project. Section 1983 provides a legal vehicle to bring a lawsuit, he said.
Private individuals in past decades brought lawsuits under Section 2, but a 2023 8th Circuit ruling in an Arkansas redistricting case held that Section 2 doesn’t allow for private claims. That ruling and Wednesday’s ruling only apply to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which encompasses Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.
“These decisions together at the moment mean that no one can sue under the Voting Rights Act in the seven states that comprise the 8th Circuit, other than the U.S. Attorney General,” said Mark Gaber, senior director for redistricting at Campaign Legal Center and an attorney for the Spirit Lake Tribe and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.
The majority opinion Wednesday said that in order to use Section 1983 to file lawsuits over voting rights, including how redistricting affects them, a private person or group must “unambiguously” have the right to sue under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Appeals Judge Raymond Gruender, appointed by George W. Bush and writing for the majority, said that while the tribes “are within the general zone of interest” of the Voting Rights Act, it is “without the statute having unambiguously conferred an individual right.”
In a dissent, Circuit Chief Judge Steven Colloton, another Bush appointee, said Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act does confer a right to sue and he would have upheld the tribes’ legal victory on redistricting.
Wednesday’s decision and the Arkansas ruling “create circuit splits” on the Section 2 and Section 1983 issues because the 8th Circuit is the only court to rule in such a way in both instances, Gaber said. The tribes and their attorneys are discussing and considering appeal options, he said.
The 2-1 ruling is a reversal for the two tribes, who had successfully challenged North Dakota’s 2021 redistricting map, alleging it dilutes their voting strength.
The tribes wanted to share a single legislative district, electing a state senator and two House members, making it more likely that all three would be Native American. The 2021 plan split them into different districts. The court-ordered plan gave the tribes what they wanted.
Spirit Lake, Turtle Mountain and several tribal citizens alleged that the 2021 map drew the lines so that while Turtle Mountain members still could elect a House member, the Spirit Lake members could not.
In late 2023, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Peter Welte ruled after a trial, saying the Legislature’s map “prevents Native American voters from having an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice” in violation of the Voting Rights Act’s Section 2.
In early 2024, the judge ordered a new map into place with a joint district for the two tribes. Their reservations near the Canadian border and in northeastern North Dakota, respectively, are about 60 miles (97 kilometers) apart. Later that year, voters elected three Native Americans, all Democrats, to the district’s seats.
Republican Senate Majority Leader David Hogue said the 2021 boundaries the Legislature drew “will be the boundaries.” Somehow officials will have to address the seats of incumbents affected by the boundaries at question, potentially by special election, he said.
“I think the Legislature was very comfortable with the fairness of the boundaries that they drew in 2021, and I think we should endeavor to uphold those boundaries,” Hogue said.
In a statement, Secretary of State Michael Howe’s office said it will now work with the 2021 map in place for the 2026 elections, “pending any further actions.”
Republicans control North Dakota’s Legislature by 83-11 in the House and 42-5 in the Senate. The state’s biennial legislative session concluded earlier this month.
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