Supreme Court puts off fight over who can sue to enforce what’s left of the Voting Rights Act
The Supreme Court has punted on a fight over the ability of voters to bring Voting Rights Act lawsuits
By Tierney Sneed, CNN
(CNN) — The Supreme Court on Monday punted on a fight over the ability of voters to bring Voting Rights Act lawsuits, dodging a major dispute over the landmark civil rights law that the conservative majority had already left on life support with a previous ruling this term.
The justices sent back to lower courts two cases that had teed up claims that only the Justice Department could bring enforcement actions under the law, which bars racial discrimination in voting.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a member of the court’s liberal wing, dissented from the decision – saying she would have summarily resolved the cases to make clear that individuals could bring the claims rather than handing them back to a lower court for further review.
Both cases were challenges that voters – not the Justice Department – had brought to redistricting plans. The justices told the lower courts to take another look at the lawsuits in light of the opinion the conservative majority issued this month that significantly raised the bar for when a Voting Rights Act redistricting case can succeed, but that did not address the cause-of-action question.
The move leaves a final answer on a question that would effectively kill the already thoroughly-weakened statute for another day.
Under President Donald Trump, the Justice Department has shown little interest in enforcing the Voting Rights Act and his administration had even argued in favor of the high court’s ruling this month that significantly narrowed the law’s reach in electoral map-drawing.
Courts have long assumed that private individuals could sue under the law in addition to the actions that the Justice Department is authorized to bring, and the Supreme Court has previously taken up VRA cases brought by voters. However, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Neil Gorsuch have signaled in writings in previous VRA cases that they believe it to be an open question.
In one of the cases, arising out of Mississippi, a lower court affirmed that individuals had the right to sue in court under the VRA. In the other dispute the justices were reviewing, the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals said that only the Justice Department could bring VRA cases.
The Supreme Court previously put that opinion – which set the precedent for Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas and Arkansas – on hold, over the dissent of Thomas, Gorsuch and Justice Samuel Alito.
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