A federal court has struck down the legislative maps that North Dakota Republicans enacted after the 2020 census, ruling that GOP mapmakers violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of Native Americans.
At issue are the 9th and 15th Legislative Districts, which, like all districts in the state, each elect one senator and two representatives. Native tribes who brought the lawsuit charged that lawmakers had improperly split up two reservations, Turtle Mountain and Spirit Lake, placing them in separate districts.
As a result, Native voters were unable to elect their preferred candidates—almost certainly Native Democrats—in either district; instead, both supported white Republicans. The 9th District also failed to perform in another way. While most North Dakota districts elect both members of the state House on an at-large basis, legislators split the 9th into two "subdistricts" to ostensibly comply with the VRA.
The court, however, found fault with that approach, which saw Republicans pack Native Americans into just one of those subdistricts. That left District 9A with an 80% Native population while 9B was just 32% Native. The former consequently supported Joe Biden by a 73-26 margin and elected a Democrat to the legislature, while the latter went for Donald Trump 61-37 and sent a Republican to the statehouse.
Plaintiffs have argued that the two reservations should be combined into a single district that would be capable of electing Native voters’ legislative candidates of choice on an at-large basis, both for the Senate and the House. That would obviate the need to subdivide the district and would allow Native voters to elect three of their preferred candidates.
The court set a Dec. 22 deadline for North Dakota's Republican-dominated state government to pass a new map to remedy the violation and ordered that new elections be held in November of next year. However, it's possible that a GOP appeal could drag out a resolution until after 2024.
Correction: This piece has been updated to clarify the nature of the Voting Rights Act violation found in North Dakota’s legislative districts.
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