Arkansas Appeals Court Hears Arguments on the Voting Rights Act

Earlier this month, an Arkansas federal appeals court heard arguments over whether the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) allows private citizens to file lawsuits when they feel their voting rights are being infringed upon. In the recent past, many Republican-led states have been accused of redistricting and gerrymandering in a way that is racially discriminatory, in order to suppress votes from certain racial demographics. Private citizens and advocacy groups make up a large majority of those filing lawsuits against such discriminatory gerrymandering.

However, last year, a Trump-appointed judge in Arkansas ruled that private parties, in this case the NAACP, could not sue under the relevant VRA provision known as Section 2. Section 2 of the VRA prohibits “voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups.” Though the ruling went against decades of judicial practice, the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, with a panel of three Republican judges, is currently considering whether to uphold that finding.

The case in Arkansas was filed by the NAACP after a redrawn House district map was approved by the state. The NAACP, represented by the ACLU, argued that the new map diluted the influence of Black voters in the state. The approved map included 11 majority Black districts, which the groups challenging the redistricting plan argued were too few. They suggested 16 majority Black districts would more closely reflect the state’s Black population.

An attorney for the state of Arkansas argued that the 1965 law never explicitly allows for private parties to sue under Section 2, and that Congress had never added language to suggest so. Should the appellate court uphold this ruling, the case may be brought up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

If private citizens can’t sue under Section 2, who can? Should the SCOTUS vote to block private parties from filing lawsuits under Section 2 of the VRA, the task of keeping voting rights intact will fall solely on the US Department of Justice. Critics of the Ark. ruling worry that staffing shortages and shrinking budgets would severely impact the number of lawsuits filed when voting rights are being infringed upon.

“The (Department of Justice), no matter how staffed up it is, no matter how many resources they apply to this particular endeavor, is simply not going to be able to do the same amount as it could do with the partnership of private plaintiffs here,” says Sophia Lin Lakin, a top American Civil Liberties Union voting rights attorney.

David Becker, an alum of the Justice Department’s voting section who now leads the Center for Election Innovation & Research, called the ruling on Section 2 “radical.” “It absolutely means it’s more likely that there will be potential partisan mischief that could negatively impact the voters who are protected by the Voting Rights Act,” Becker tells CNN.