A sign in Devils Lake, North Dakota, marks the road leading to the Spirit Lake Reservation. (Jeff Beach/North Dakota Monitor)
By: Mary Steurer
WASHINGTON (North Dakota Monitor) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday put a temporary freeze on North Dakota’s legislative district map, keeping it in place pending next steps in a tribal voting rights case against the state.
The move came just a day before the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals was expected to issue a mandate officially reversing a North Dakota federal judge’s decision and ordering the lawsuit to be dismissed. That would have resulted in North Dakota reverting back to a previous district map that two tribal nations and a group of tribal citizens took the state to court to change.
The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, Spirit Lake Nation and three tribal members filed the lawsuit in 2022, alleging that North Dakota’s 2021 redistricting map was discriminatory and diluted the power of Indigenous voters.
North Dakota U.S. District Court Judge Peter Welte in 2023 sided with the plaintiffs and ordered the state to adopt a different map, but the 8th Circuit reversed his decision in May. The appellate court ruled that private citizens cannot file lawsuits under Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act, which outlaws racially discriminatory voting practices.
The plaintiffs are getting ready to petition the Supreme Court to review the lawsuit. On Tuesday, they filed a motion asking the court to allow Welte’s map to stay in place while the case plays out.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to an initial, more limited element of that request on Wednesday. Under the high court’s administrative stay, the map will remain unchanged for now. The justices will later decide whether it’s necessary to put a longer-term hold on the district map until a final decision in the case is reached.
The high court on Tuesday asked the state to file its response to the plaintiffs’ motion by July 22. North Dakota has maintained that the 2021 map is not discriminatory and that it agrees with the 8th Circuit’s finding that the tribes lack standing to sue.
The plaintiffs’ deadline to file their official petition asking the Supreme Court to take the case is in October.
In a Tuesday filing, the plaintiffs argued the 8th Circuit’s decision severely damaged voting rights in the circuit’s seven states. The 8th Circuit is the only one to hold that private plaintiffs cannot file voting discrimination claims under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
The plaintiffs also said that allowing North Dakota’s 2021 map to go back into effect would harm Native American voters as well as potentially unseat three lawmakers.
Welte’s map, adopted in 2024, changed District 9 to include two reservations. In the 2024 election, three Native American candidates from that district were elected to the state Legislature: Sen. Richard Marcellais and Rep. Jayme Davis — both citizens of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa — and Rep. Collette Brown, a citizen of the Spirit Lake Nation and plaintiff in the lawsuit. All three are Democrats.
If the 2021 map is reinstated, three lawmakers would change districts, including Brown. Attorneys for the North Dakota Legislature have said the lawmakers could be subject to removal from office, since the state constitution requires lawmakers to live in the districts they represent.
The 8th Circuit includes North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska and Arkansas.
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