The Supreme Court temporarily blocked a ruling Wednesday that would have potentially disenfranchised American Indians in a legal battle over North Dakota’s legislative map.
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh in a brief order put a halt on a decision out of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that rejected a challenge to the state’s map which a lower court had previously reasoned discriminated against Native Americans.
The map moved to eliminate two of three legislative districts that have a heavy Indian population.
The lower court instead allowed a map proposed by the plaintiffs to be used, but the state had appealed and the 8th Circuit had ruled the Indians cannot bring a challenge by private plaintiffs, citing civil rights laws.
That follows another case, where the 8th Circuit had ruled private challengers cannot use Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to bring cases. Section 2 is meant to protect against racial discrimination in the map-drawing process.
The tribes and voters said in their legal filing that the 8th Circuit ruling would “knee-cap Congress’s most important civil rights statute.”
They say the high court will likely have to weigh the issue since the 8th Circuit has become an outlier when the group files a petition for review.
It would take four justices to vote in favor of hearing the dispute for oral arguments to be granted.
The case is Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Michael Howe, Secretary of State of North Dakota.
