Supreme Court avoids taking up Voting Rights Act enforcement : NPR

A protester holds a sign reading “PROTECT MINORITY VOTING RIGHTS” during a March 2025 rally in front of the United States Supreme Court in Washington, DC.

Jemal Countess/Getty Images for the Legal Defense Fund

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Jemal Countess/Getty Images for the Legal Defense Fund

Weeks after further weakening the Voting Rights Act, the U.S. Supreme Court has avoided ruling on a legal issue that could seriously limit enforcement of the law’s remaining protections for minority voters.

In a brief, unsigned order Monday, the high court announced it was sending cases involving the state legislative maps of Mississippi and North Dakota back to lower courts for reconsideration in light of its recent ruling in Louisiana v. Callais.

This historic April ruling weakened the Voting Rights Act’s protections against racial discrimination in redistricting and, as a result, reignited the congressional gerrymandering battle launched by President Trump ahead of the 2026 midterm elections to help Republicans maintain control of the House of Representatives.

The court’s decision Monday effectively allows the justices to take an exit after hearing what could have been the next major fight at the Supreme Court over the landmark 1965 law.

What the court avoided in Monday’s order: a “private right of action”

What’s known as Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was primarily enforced as a result of lawsuits filed by voters and advocacy groups, which challenged hundreds of voting district maps and other election-related proceedings.

But in the Mississippi and North Dakota redistricting cases, Republican officials made a novel argument: Individuals and groups don’t have the right to sue under Section 2, and only the U.S. attorney general does.

Such an interpretation would result in far fewer Section 2 lawsuits, legal experts say.

The Supreme Court’s decision not to address the issue of what the legal world calls a “private right of action” under Article 2 sparked reluctance from liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Disagreeing with Monday’s order, Jackson pointed to the high court’s decision in the case Callais The case did not address the legal question of the applicability of Section 2 by individuals and groups.

“So I see no reason to overturn the lower court’s judgment,” Jackson said, criticizing the decision to overturn previous lower court decisions in the Mississippi and North Dakota cases.

Enforcement of another section of the Voting Rights Act is also under threat.

Yet as these cases now move through the federal court system, the future application of another section of the Voting Rights Act is also in question.

Section 208 generally allows voters who need help voting because of a disability or inability to read or write to get help from a person of their choice. But in a case challenging an Arkansas law, a panel of the 8th U.S. Court of Appeals concluded that private groups and individuals cannot sue to enforce Section 208.

This federal appeals court also ruled against a private Section 2 right of action in the North Dakota legislative redistricting case.

In a dissenting opinion of the 8th Circuit’s decision not to review the panel’s decision in the Arkansas case, Chief Judge Steven Colloton, a nominee of former President George W. Bush, wrote that the 8th Circuit continues on a “regrettable path of rendering inapplicable, in this circuit alone, the Voting Rights Act that many have considered “the most successful civil rights law in the nation’s history.” “

A Supreme Court brief on the Arkansas case is expected Monday as the justices prepare to decide, at some point, whether to take it up.

Edited by Benjamin Swasey