Protesters hold a sign reading “Protect minority voting rights” outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC in 2025.
Jamel Countess/Getty Images for the Legal Defense Fund
hide caption
toggle caption
Jamel Countess/Getty Images for the Legal Defense Fund
By refusing to consider a lower court’s decision, the US Supreme Court has dealt another blow to the Voting Rights Act.
The court announced Monday it will not review the Arkansas-based lawsuit, leading to a 2025 appeals panel decision that eliminates a long-used tool to protect minority voters from discrimination under the landmark law in seven mainly Midwestern states.
That decision 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 the law known as Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act, which generally allows voters with disabilities or those unable to read or write to get help voting from a person of their choice.
The Supreme Court’s move comes nearly two months after its conservative supermajority issued a major decision that further weakened the Voting Rights Act, setting the stage for redistricting across the country.
At issue in the case: “Private right of action”
In May, shortly after weakening Section 2’s protections against racial discrimination in redistricting, the high court decided that what the legal world calls a “private right of action” would not be addressed, sending two cases brought by black voters in Mississippi and Native American voters in North Dakota back to lower courts.
For decades, enforcement of these sections of the Voting Rights Act has been conducted primarily by lawsuits by private individuals and groups.
But after conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch issued a single-paragraph opinion in 2021 questioning the private right of action, Republican officials in several states have raised a new legal argument: They argue that only the U.S. attorney general has the authority to bring lawsuits under these parts of the Voting Rights Act.
Such an interpretation of the law would likely lead to a dramatic decline in voting rights lawsuits due to the Justice Department’s limited resources and changing priorities under different presidential administrations.
The case the justices decided not to take up was brought by the immigrant advocacy group Arkansas United, which has provided Spanish-language interpreters at polling places to assist voters with limited English proficiency. The group has challenged an Arkansas law that bans a person who is not a poll worker from helping more than six voters vote. 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 such a 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 decades of precedent on this legal issue.
In a statement, Republican Attorney General Tim Griffin of Arkansas called the Supreme Court’s refusal to take up the 8th Circuit panel’s decision a “victory for the state” and praised the high court for “adhering to the clear meaning of the language in the Voting Rights Act.”
Supreme Court may consider this issue in future
The brief, unsigned order issued Monday by the high court did not explain why the justices decided not to review the 8th Circuit panel’s decision 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 decision that specifically addresses whether private groups and individuals can sue under Section 208. That means there are no disagreements among the appeals courts for resolution by the Supreme Court, Arkansas Republican officials argued.
However, attorneys for Arkansas United in the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund countered that “there is a clear conflict between the Eighth Circuit’s decision and the unbroken line of cases allowing private plaintiffs to vindicate their rights under Section 208.”
“The limited case law regarding private enforcement of Section 208 does not mean that circuit division is non-existent, or that the issue is unimportant,” MALDEF lawyers wrote in their court filing. “Instead, it shows just how illogical the Eighth Circuit’s decision is.”
MALDEF president and general counsel Thomas Saenz told NPR that the civil rights group now plans to eventually ask the Supreme Court to review the private right of action under Section 208 through a Missouri-based lawsuit that was put on hold during the appeals process of the Arkansas case.
The case, led by Missouri Protection and Advocacy Services, which advocates for voters with disabilities, challenges a state law that prohibits a person from assisting more than one disabled voter or a voter who cannot read or write at each election unless the person providing the assistance is a poll worker or an immediate family member of the voter.
“We will try to pursue this and these precedents will be cited to stop us,” Saenz says. “We will move forward and hope that the Supreme Court will see that it needs to prevent this situation where only one circuit in the entire country has taken the opposite approach to all the rest and barred private enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.”
edited by Benjamin Swasey
<a href=