North Dakota ruling erases path to sue under Voting Rights Act
BISMARCK, N.D. — A federal appeals court that already has said private individuals and groups cannot sue under a key part of the federal Voting Rights Act went even further Wednesday toward blocking lawsuits over alleged racial bias in voting in seven Midwest states.
But its decisions may not be the last word, because another appeals court has ruled differently, and the U.S. Supreme Court might have to resolve the conflict. The latest ruling reversed a legal victory for two tribal nations in North Dakota that challenged a legislative redistricting plan.
The ruling shuts off a route to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act through a federal civil rights law known as Section 1983, which allows people to sue state officials to vindicate their federal or constitutional rights, said Jonathan Topaz, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union Voting Rights Project. Section 1983 provides a legal vehicle to bring a lawsuit, he said.
Private individuals in past decades brought lawsuits under Section 2, but a 2023 8th Circuit ruling in an Arkansas redistricting case held that Section 2 doesn't allow for private claims. That ruling and Wednesday's ruling only apply to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which encompasses Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.
'These decisions together at the moment mean that no one can sue under the Voting Rights Act in the seven states that comprise the 8th Circuit, other than the U.S. Attorney General,' said Mark Gaber, senior director for redistricting at Campaign Legal Center and an attorney for the Spirit Lake Tribe and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.
The majority opinion Wednesday said that in order to use Section 1983 to file lawsuits over voting rights, including how redistricting affects them, a private person or group must 'unambiguously' have the right to sue under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Appeals Judge Raymond Gruender, appointed by George W. Bush and writing for the majority, said that while the tribes 'are within the general zone of interest' of the Voting Rights Act, it is 'without the statute having unambiguously conferred an individual right.'
In a dissent, Circuit Chief Judge Steven Colloton, another Bush appointee, said Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act does confer a right to sue and he would have upheld the tribes' legal victory on redistricting.
Wednesday's decision and the Arkansas ruling "create circuit splits' on the Section 2 and Section 1983 issues because the 8th Circuit is the only court to rule in such a way in both instances, Gaber said. The tribes and their attorneys are discussing and considering appeal options, he said.
The 2-1 ruling is a reversal for the two tribes, who had successfully challenged North Dakota's 2021 redistricting map, alleging it dilutes their voting strength.
The tribes wanted to share a single legislative district, electing a state senator and two House members, making it more likely that all three would be Native American. The 2021 plan split them into different districts. The court-ordered plan gave the tribes what they wanted.
Spirit Lake, Turtle Mountain and several tribal citizens alleged that the 2021 map drew the lines so that while Turtle Mountain members still could elect a House member, the Spirit Lake members could not.
In late 2023, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Peter Welte ruled after a trial, saying the Legislature's map 'prevents Native American voters from having an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice" in violation of the Voting Rights Act's Section 2.
In early 2024, the judge ordered a new map into place with a joint district for the two tribes. Their reservations near the Canadian border and in northeastern North Dakota, respectively, are about 60 miles (97 kilometers) apart. Later that year, voters elected three Native Americans, all Democrats, to the district's seats.
Republican Senate Majority Leader David Hogue said the 2021 boundaries the Legislature drew 'will be the boundaries." Somehow officials will have to address the seats of incumbents affected by the boundaries at question, potentially by special election, he said.
'I think the Legislature was very comfortable with the fairness of the boundaries that they drew in 2021, and I think we should endeavor to uphold those boundaries,' Hogue said.
In a statement, Secretary of State Michael Howe's office said it will now work with the 2021 map in place for the 2026 elections, 'pending any further actions.'
Republicans control North Dakota's Legislature by 83-11 in the House and 42-5 in the Senate. The state's biennial legislative session concluded earlier this month.
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Washington Post
3 hours ago
- Washington Post
The Supreme Court puts off restoring the Voting Rights Act's shine
Sixty years ago this summer, Congress enacted the nation-transforming Voting Rights Act. Soon, however, Congress and a deferential Supreme Court, by reverse alchemy, turned the gold of the VRA into the lead of today's racial distribution of representation. Last Friday, the Supreme Court delayed, pending reargument next term, deciding a case that could reverse the VRA's tarnishment. On the final day of the 2024-2025 term, the court issued 404 pages of decisions, concurrences and dissents in six cases. Singularly important, however, were the six pages of Justice Clarence Thomas's dissent from the court's decision not to decide the case concerning the patent racial gerrymandering in Louisiana's redistricting map. Thomas cites the 'intractable' conflict between the VRA as the court has construed it as a guarantee of the rights of groups, and the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the laws for persons. 'Intractable'? No, insoluble. 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The Voting Rights Act, enacted to eliminate acts of invidious discrimination, has been twisted to engineer racial balance in political processes by taking legal cognizance of, and thereby encouraging, racial as opposed to citizenship identities. Judicial decisions have held that illegal 'vote dilution' (a phrase not in the 1965 VRA) exists when government-approved minorities could not elect candidates of their 'choice,' which was presumed to be defined racially. The creation of minority-majority electoral districts, drawn to preserve or create racially homogenous enclaves, supposedly serves electoral fairness, defined as facilitating minority office-holding. The VRA became an instrument for turning race and ethnicity into legally determinative categories for claims to proportional allocations of political power. Doing so, today's VRA encourages a group conflict model of American politics. 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USA Today
4 hours ago
- USA Today
They battled for parental rights decades ago. How they now view a big Supreme Court ruling
More than three decades ago, these parents battled unsuccessfully in the courts for parental rights in their public schools. Now, they weigh the high court's ruling in a key Maryland case. On April 8, 1992, Suzanne Brown asked her son, Jason Mesiti, about his day at school. 'He said, 'probably the worst in my life,'' Brown recalled. While she said the remark was 'somewhat dramatic,' she, too, was disturbed by what her son, a high school sophomore at the time, described. Mesiti had to attend an assembly about sex and AIDS prevention at his school in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. He described the program's use of 'profane, lewd and lascivious language' and how at one point a demonstration included a female student pulling a condom over a male student's head. Mesiti said such actions made it feel 'like you were being Punk'd,' and Brown said she was 'totally shocked' upon reviewing a transcript of the program. His family unsuccessfully sued, with the religious beliefs of parents a key part of the case. Brown said she should have been notified about the content of that program and had the opportunity to opt out. Now, more than three decades later, parents have that right, thanks to a June 27 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which sided with a group of Maryland parents who wanted to opt their children out of English language arts curriculum with LBGTQ+ characters. Montgomery County Public Schools initially allowed opt-outs but later ended such accommodations because they threatened to cause 'significant disruptions.' A group of parents sued, and the case before the high court was one of the most high profile this year with sweeping ramifications for public school districts across the nation. In the 6-3 decision, the court said the school district violated the parents' First Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion by not allowing them to opt out from having their children read books with LGBTQ themes at school. Justice Samuel Alito said parents have an established right to direct their children's religious upbringing. The books in the Maryland case, he said, "unmistakably convey a particular viewpoint about same-sex marriage and gender." The three liberal justices disagreed. Public schools have the 'core premise' of introducing students to a 'range of concepts and views that reflect our entire society,' Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote. 'Exposure to new ideas has always been a vital part of that project, until now,' she wrote. Sotomayor said the ruling could result in 'chaos' for the public school system and have a chilling effect on disadvantaged public schools that may be wary of introducing curriculum with the potential to invite lawsuits or create logistical challenges. Looking at things now, Brown said she doesn't believe allowing parents to opt out places an 'overwhelming' burden on schools. 'If the parents don't care ... that's up to them, but if a parent does have beliefs and truths they want to stick to for their children, I think they should have the right to do that,' Brown said. Opt-outs may only provide 'myth of control,' defendant says Suzi Landolphi, who created the program Mesiti attended and was named in the lawsuit that followed, acknowledged that her tactics were unorthodox and could even be 'traumatizing' for some students. But she said school officials wanted students to attend the program given the AIDS epidemic that was, at that time, killing tens of thousands of Americans each year. She said schools could have decided whether to require parent permission for students to attend her program but that Chelmsford High School opted not to do so. USA TODAY reached out to the school for comment. Though she 'would've absolutely preferred" students to have parental permission to attend her program, Landolphi moved forward with the goal of using humor and theatricality to spread awareness of serious issues among high school students. 'The last thing in the world I want to do is stand up there and lecture and, first of all, not have any young people come in to the performance or to the presentation, and then I don't want them to tune out, because this is important, life-saving information,' she said. Landolphi, who now works as a therapist, said she has 'no trouble' with parents wanting to prevent their children from being exposed to certain content. But she said that such measures may only support the 'myth of control." Parents can't expect to shield their children from everything they find objectionable in the age of smartphones and social media, she said. Brown described her family as Christ followers but said her objection to Landolphi's program more than three decades ago was driven primarily by 'common sense.' A district court dismissed her lawsuit in 1995. The decision was later upheld by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Landolphi told USA TODAY there have been times when she disagreed with her children's curriculum. Those occasions prompted conversations that "allowed for deeper understanding and connection," but she said she "never felt burdened" by such incidents. Mesiti, like his mother, told USA TODAY that parents 'have a right to do what they want' as it relates to their children. At the same time, he disagrees with book bans and thinks students benefit from exposure to diverse beliefs and lifestyles. "I believe schools should distinguish between potentially harmful, age-inappropriate content and lawful, necessary civil-rights education," Mesiti said. "The former may justify opt-outs, and the latter should remain mandatory for informed citizenship and workplace readiness." But Mesiti said he is concerned about public schools "playing it safe" in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Maryland case, and "limiting essential, factual curriculum." Likewise, Zach Schurin, an attorney with expertise in education law, echoed Sotomayor's concerns. Public school districts may now 'think very long and hard about including curriculum that is controversial in nature,' he said. Based on the court's ruling, a school that still seeks to mandate such material without allowing opt-outs must prove that it has a compelling interest in doing so that overrides the burden on parents' free exercise of religion, he said. 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The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling the following year and sent the case back to the lower court with 'directions to dismiss the complaint.' It was ultimately a 'political story,' Bates said. Though the case originated as a local issue, it attracted attention from national groups and became 'kind of a proxy war." The parents were backed by Concerned Women for America, for example, while the civil liberties group People for the American Way supported the school on the grounds that a ruling in the parents' favor 'could have caused chaos in public education across the country.' The Maryland case has similarly involved national players. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty represented the Maryland parents, who also had support from the Southeastern Legal Foundation and Regent University's Robertson Center for Constitutional Law. The school district, however, had backing from groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and GLAAD. Bates supported the Supreme Court's ruling and said classrooms benefit from accommodating students from a variety of perspectives. 'The public school is one of the last places in American life where people from different backgrounds mix,' he said. 'In our polarized times, that kind of exposure matters.' He noted that some families left Montgomery County Public Schools over the ban on opt-outs, meaning a 'curriculum designed to promote diversity ended up making the schools less diverse.' 'Behind every case are families doing their best' Corky Leebaert was in seventh grade when his father, Turk Leebaert, objected to his mandatory health class in 1998. The course covered topics including drugs, alcohol and sex. Though a Connecticut law allowed parents to opt their children out of lessons related to family life, such as sexuality and family planning, Turk Leebaert sought to remove his son from the course altogether. Corky Leebaert failed the course due to lack of attendance. His father later sued school officials and the town of Fairfield, Connecticut in 2002 on First and Fourteenth Amendment grounds. 'I believe that God has empowered human beings with the right to bring their children up with correct moral principles in dealing with the issues taught in this course, not the school system,' Turk Leebaert wrote in an affidavit referenced in the lawsuit. Corky Leebaert told USA TODAY he didn't 'fully grasp the legal significance of what was happening' at the time given his young age but felt a 'quiet tension' from faculty and staff. 'I wouldn't describe it as overt mistreatment, but there was definitely a sense that I was 'part of something' that made people uncomfortable,' he said. 'It was subtle – hesitations in conversation, brief looks – but it was there.' He didn't have a personal objection to the material but respected his father's beliefs and decision to pursue legal action. Though he said he understands schools "have an obligation to provide consistent education," which was among a district court judge's reasons for ruling against his father, he also believes parents should have a right to opt their children out of curriculum they find 'unethical or morally inappropriate.' In cases like the one in Maryland, he supports schools having inclusive books in the curriculum but allowing parents to opt out. If the majority do, he said the school should find alternative material. At the same time, he's 'cautious about broad opt-out rights.' 'If we allow opt-outs for every issue that makes someone uncomfortable, we risk eroding the integrity of public education,' he said. Now a father himself, Leebaert said he keeps tabs on his children's curriculum, 'not because I'm looking for things to reject, but because I believe engagement is part of responsible parenting.' He ultimately thinks students are best served when parents and schools build a partnership in which there is room for 'flexibility and accommodation.' 'Leebaert v. Harrington taught me that legal systems often move impersonally, but behind every case are families doing their best to navigate difficult questions,' he said. BrieAnna Frank is a First Amendment Reporting Fellow at USA TODAY. Reach her at bjfrank@ USA TODAY's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Yahoo
Should public school teachers be allowed to lead students in prayer? Here's what Americans think
A fresh wave of debate is unfolding across the country over the role of prayer and religion in public schools. Last week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law requiring every public school classroom to display the Ten Commandments. Starting in September, every public school classroom in Texas will have to 'visibly display a poster sized at least 16 by 20 inches' with the Ten Commandments, according to the Texas Tribune. This law is part of a broader push by Texas lawmakers to reintroduce Judeo-Christian values into public education. In May, the state legislature also passed a bill allowing schools to offer a daily period for prayer or religious study. Similar efforts elsewhere have faced legal hurdles. In Louisiana, a Ten Commandments law was blocked by a panel of federal appellate judges, who ruled it unconstitutional. And the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the launch of the nation's first religious public charter school in Oklahoma after a 4-4 split left a lower court ruling against the school in place. When it comes to prayer in public schools, where do Americans stand on this question? It depends where you go in the country, according to a new analysis from Pew Research Center. A slim majority of U.S. adults, 52%, say they support allowing teachers to lead their classes in prayers that mention Jesus, while 46% oppose the idea. But behind this breakdown are significant regional differences that point to deep divides among Americans on this question. In states like Mississippi and Alabama, support tops 75%, reflecting the strong religious tradition in much of the South. In contrast, states like Oregon (65%), Vermont (64%) and California (56%) show majority opposition. Meanwhile, in states such as Virginia, Pennsylvania and Arizona, public opinion is so closely divided that no clear majority emerges. In Utah, 45% favor prayer in class, while 54% oppose it, according to Pew. These findings are part of the latest Religious Landscape Study that took an expansive look at the religious shifts in the country. The study also found that when it comes to the display of religious symbols, half of Americans — about 53% — support allowing cities and towns to display religious symbols on public property, with support especially strong among Christians. In contrast, much smaller shares of non-Christian groups support this idea, including 39% of Buddhists, 35% of Muslims, 31% of Hindus and 25% of Jews. In some states, efforts to incorporate prayer and scripture into the school day have been met with opposition, as in Louisiana's effort to have the Ten Commandments displayed in classrooms, which was banned by a federal appeals court as unconstitutional. 'This is a resounding victory for the separation of church and state and public education,' said Heather L. Weaver, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, per the Associated Press. 'With (the) ruling, the Fifth Circuit has held Louisiana accountable to a core constitutional promise: Public schools are not Sunday schools, and they must welcome all students, regardless of faith.' Supporters backing the introduction of prayer and scripture back into the classroom believe such measures reinforce moral values, reflect the country's religious heritage and give families more freedom to express their faith in public education. 'The Bible is a necessary historical document to teach our kids about the history of this country, to have a complete understanding of Western civilization, to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system — and is frankly, we're talking about the Bible, one of the most foundational documents used for the Constitution and the birth of our country," Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters said when he introduced the policy to the state's schools last year, per The Washington Post.
