The Supreme Court announced on Thursday that it would block for now a federal appeals court ruling that would sharply curtail the Voting Rights Act by limiting who can sue to enforce protections against racial discrimination.
The decision was unsigned, and it did not provide the court’s reasoning, as is typical in such emergency orders. Three of the court’s conservative justices — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch — said they would have denied the request and allowed the lower court decision to go into effect.
The order by the court stated that the pause would remain in place pending the filing of a petition by the parties involved and a decision by the Supreme Court on whether to hear the case.
The case, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Howe, involves two North Dakota tribes and several individual voters, who brought a lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act challenging a state legislative map. The challengers argued that the map denied Native American voters an equal opportunity to elect their candidates of choice.
A federal appeals court in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit found that the tribal nation and Native American voters should have been barred from bringing the lawsuit at all, finding that private individuals and groups cannot bring challenges under the Voting Rights Act.
Such a decision could have sweeping repercussions for the act, a landmark piece of legislation from the civil rights era, and would severely curtail the kind of challenges to racial discrimination that have been brought for decades. Historically, many voting rights challenges have been brought by individuals and private groups, including civil rights organizations.
On July 15, the tribes filed an emergency application with the justices, seeking a temporary freeze on the appeals court decision. The following day, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who handles emergency applications from that region of the country, issued a temporary block while the justices considered the application.
The court’s order on Thursday extends that temporary pause. Next, the tribes have said they will ask the court to hear the case on its merits, and the justices will decide whether to add the case to the court’s docket.
In recent years, the court has chipped away at the Voting Rights Act. If the justices agree to hear the North Dakota matter, it will be the second major voting rights case in the upcoming term, which begins in October.
The justices are already poised to hear arguments in a long-running dispute over Louisiana’s voting map, although a date for argument has not yet been set.