Supreme Court Pauses Ruling Limiting Reach of Voting Rights Act

The US Supreme Court temporarily paused a lower court ruling that significantly curtailed the effectiveness of the Voting Rights Act, giving a temporary win to American Indian tribes who challenged voting maps in North Dakota.

The unsigned order on Thursday didn’t explain the decision, only that the lower court’s opinion wouldn’t go into effect until the justices decided whether to hear the appeal.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh previously issued an administrative stay pausing the case until the whole court could consider the issue.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch noted their dissent.

The order from the Supreme Court’s emergency, or shadow, docket pauses for now a ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit that said private plaintiffs like the tribes couldn’t sue to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Section 2 prohibits voting laws or practices that discriminate on the basis of race. Plaintiffs have long used Section 2 to challenge redistricting maps that they say dilutes the voting power of minority voters.

The Eighth Circuit in 2023 became the first and only federal appellate court to hold that private plaintiffs couldn’t sue under Section 2 directly, breaking away from a decades-old practice of allowing private plaintiffs to enforce the act.

In the case paused by the Supreme Court, the Eighth Circuit further held that private plaintiffs couldn’t sue under a separate federal law, known as Section 1983, to enforce the VRA. Section 1983 allows individuals to sue state and local officials for violating their constitutional rights.

The effect of the rulings means that only the Justice Department can sue to enforce Section 2 in the Eighth Circuit. The Justice Department has said in other court filings that it doesn’t have the resources to police Section 2 without private plaintiffs.

Since 1982, private plaintiffs have been behind a vast majority of the Section 2 cases, with the DOJ involved in less than 15%, the tribes told the justices in urging them to pause the case. They noted that every Section 2 case decided by the Supreme Court was brought by private plaintiffs.

A case out of Alabama is likely to present the same question for the justices soon. A three-judge district court panel in Singleton v. Allen rejected the state’s claim that the private parties couldn’t sue to enforce Section 2. Alabama’s appeal to the Supreme Court is due later this summer.

It’s “difficult in the extreme for us to believe that for nearly sixty years, federal courts have consistently misunderstood one of the most important sections of one of the most important civil rights statutes in American history, and that Congress has steadfastly refused to correct our apparent error,” the judges said in the Alabama case.

The Supreme Court’s order means that the remedial map put into place by a federal district court, which resulted in the election of more Native American state lawmakers in 2024, will likely govern the 2026 election as well.

The case was brought by tribes who say the state reduced the number of seats in which Native American voters could elect their candidates of choice from three to one.

The case is Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Howe, U.S., No. 25A62, stayed 7/24/25.