Voting Rights Act weighs heavily in North Dakota’s attempt to revisit redistricting decision it won

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Months after it won a lawsuit over legislative boundaries, North Dakota is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit its victory, baffling others involved in the state’s redistricting fights and prompting some legal experts to call the state’s action a potential assault on the Voting Rights Act.

At issue is a ruling by a federal panel over a lawsuit filed by Republicans challenging the constitutionality of a redistricting map that created House subdistricts encompassing two American Indian reservations. Proponents of the subdistricts said they gave tribal nations better chances to elect their own members. Last fall, a federal three-judge panel tossed out the lawsuit at the request of the state and the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation. The judges wrote that “assuming without deciding” that race was the main factor for the subdistricts, “the State had good reasons and strong evidence to believe the subdistricts were required by the VRA.”

The plaintiffs appealed.

North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley said the three-judge panel decided the matter correctly under existing case law — but for the wrong reason. The state argues in a filing made Monday that it “cannot defend this Court’s ‘assumption’ that attempted compliance with the VRA (or any statute) would justify racial discrimination in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

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