SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – Attorney General Sean D. Reyes joined an amicus brief, led by the State of Alabama, in Turtle Mountain v. Howe. The case involves a challenge to North Dakota’s recent state redistricting map and is currently pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The coalition of attorneys general submitted the brief in support of North Dakota.
The case commenced in February 2022, when the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians filed a lawsuit over the most recent legislative map in North Dakota. The complaint alleged that the map “dilutes the voting strength of Native American voters from [two tribal] reservations by … reducing from two to one the number of state house seats in … this region.” The trial court ruled in favor of the tribes, leading to the appeal at the Eighth Circuit.
In their brief, the attorneys general argue that “Section 2 [of the Voting Rights Act] does not unambiguously confer new individual rights” and that the “plaintiffs did not prove a Section 2 violation.” The States make the case that “so as not to ‘subject to judicial oversight’ the shape of every state redistricting map ‘at the behest of a single citizen,’ Congress gave to the United States Attorney General alone the authority to enforce the ‘stringent new remedies’ of the Voting Rights Act.”
Joining Utah and Alabama on this brief were the States of Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and West Virginia.
