Demonstrators hold a sign saying “PROTECT MINORITY VOTING RIGHTS” outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., in 2025.
Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Legal Defense Fund
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Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Legal Defense Fund
By declining to take up a lower court ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has dealt another blow to the Voting Rights Act.
The court announced Monday that it will not review an Arkansas-based lawsuit, leaving in place a 2025 appeals panel ruling that ends a long-used tool for protecting minority voters from discrimination under the landmark law in seven mainly Midwestern states.
That ruling found that in the states covered by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota — private individuals and groups do not have the right to sue to enforce what’s known as Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act, which generally allows voters with a disability or inability to read or write to get help with voting from a person of their choice.
The Supreme Court’s move comes almost two months after its conservative supermajority issued a major ruling that further weakened the Voting Rights Act, setting off a groundswell in redistricting across the country.
At issue in the case: a “private right of action”
In May, shortly after that undermining of Section 2 protections against racial discrimination in redistricting, the high court decided not to weigh in on what the legal world calls a “private right of action,” sending back to lower courts two cases brought by Black voters in Mississippi and Native American voters in North Dakota.
For decades, enforcement of these sections of the Voting Rights Act has mainly been driven by lawsuits by private individuals and groups.
But after conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch issued a single-paragraph opinion in 2021 questioning a private right of action, Republican officials in multiple states have raised a novel legal argument: Only the U.S. attorney general, they contend, has the right to bring lawsuits under these parts of the Voting Rights Act.
Such an interpretation of the law is likely to lead to a dramatic decline in voting rights lawsuits because of the Justice Department’s limited resources and shifting priorities under different presidential administrations.
The case that the justices decided not to take up was brought by the immigrant advocacy group Arkansas United, which has provided Spanish-language interpreters at polling sites to assist voters with limited English proficiency. The group challenged an Arkansas law that bans a person who is not a poll worker from helping more than six voters cast ballots. In 2022, a federal judge ruled that the state law violates Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act. But after GOP state officials appealed, an 8th Circuit panel found last year that private groups, like Arkansas United, do not have the right to bring this kind of lawsuit, partly because such a right is not explicitly spelled out in the words of the Voting Rights Act.
So far, the 8th Circuit — which also found that there is no private right of action under Section 2 — is the only federal appeals court to break with decades of precedent on this legal issue.
In a statement, Arkansas’ Republican Attorney General Tim Griffin called the Supreme Court’s refusal to take up the 8th Circuit panel’s ruling “a victory for the state” and applauded the high court for “following the plain meaning of the language in the Voting Rights Act.”
The Supreme Court may take up this issue in a future case
The brief, unsigned order the high court released Monday did not explain why the justices decided not to review the 8th Circuit panel’s ruling in the Arkansas case.
But in a court filing last month, Republican officials in Arkansas pointed out that no other federal appeals court has issued a ruling that specifically addresses whether private groups and individuals can sue under Section 208. That, the Arkansas Republican officials argued, means there is no disagreement between appeals courts for the Supreme Court to resolve.
Arkansas United’s attorneys at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, however, countered that there is a “clear conflict between the Eighth Circuit’s decision and the unbroken line of cases allowing private litigants to vindicate their rights under Section 208.”
“The limited case law regarding private enforcement of Section 208 does not mean that the circuit split is nonexistent, or that the issue is unimportant,” the MALDEF attorneys wrote in their court filing. “Instead, it demonstrates just how much of an anomaly the Eighth Circuit’s decision is.”
Thomas Saenz, MALDEF’s president and general counsel, tells NPR that the civil rights group now plans to eventually ask the Supreme Court to review a private right of action under Section 208 through a Missouri-based lawsuit, which was put on hold while the appeals process for the Arkansas case played out.
The case led by Missouri Protection and Advocacy Services, which advocates for voters with disabilities, challenges a state law that bans a person from helping more than one disabled voter or voter who cannot read or write for each election, unless the person providing assistance is a poll worker or the voter’s immediate family member.
“We will attempt to move it forward, and these precedents will be cited to stop us,” Saenz says. “We will move up and hope that the Supreme Court will see that it needs to stop this situation where only one circuit in the entire country has taken a contrary view to everyone else and foreclosed private enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.”
Edited by Benjamin Swasey
