A federal appeals court has slammed the door shut on a powerful legal tool long used to combat racial discrimination at the ballot box—leaving civil rights advocates staring down a narrowing path in the fight over voting rights across much of the Midwest.
In a 2-1 decision, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that individuals can no longer invoke a Reconstruction-era civil rights law—Section 1983—to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a core provision that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. The ruling directly affects seven states under the court’s jurisdiction: Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
This decision reverses a lower court ruling that had sided with Native American plaintiffs, who successfully challenged North Dakota’s 2021 redistricting plan for diluting Indigenous voting strength. That case, brought by the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, the Spirit Lake Tribe, and several individual voters, had relied on Section 1983 as the legal vehicle—now deemed off-limits by the appeals court.
At the heart of the court’s reasoning was the assertion that Congress did not explicitly authorize individuals to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act through lawsuits under Section 1983. Writing for the majority, Judge Raymond Gruender concluded that the law lacked a “clear voice” granting such private enforcement power.
The ruling builds on the court’s controversial 2023 decision that already barred private plaintiffs from directly suing under Section 2, saying only the government can do so—a blow to the longstanding reality that most Voting Rights Act cases have been brought by private groups, not the Justice Department.
Civil rights advocates had chosen not to take the 2023 case to the U.S. Supreme Court, placing their remaining hopes in Section 1983 as a workaround. That route is now effectively blocked.
“This radical decision will hobble the most important anti-discrimination voting law,” said Mark Gaber of the Campaign Legal Center, who represented the plaintiffs. The group has not yet indicated whether it will seek a rehearing or escalate the case to the Supreme Court.
Judge Steve Colloton, the lone dissenter and also a Republican appointee like the other two on the panel, pushed back sharply. He warned the majority’s logic would have erased over four decades of precedent, effectively invalidating more than 400 voting rights cases that have been decided since 1982.
With the legal landscape shifting, voting rights challenges in the 8th Circuit states may now rely almost entirely on the discretion of the U.S. Department of Justice—an agency with finite resources and a long to-do list. For many advocates, the ruling marks not just a legal defeat, but a seismic shift in the battle over who gets to draw the maps, cast the ballots, and call it democracy.
