The verse they teach:

In 2022, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and the Spirit Lake Nation did what the civics textbook says you do when the system fails you. They sued.

North Dakota’s 2021 legislative map packed Native voters on Turtle Mountain into subdistrict 9A while cracking the rest into 9B. It split Spirit Lake into District 15. Under the map, Native Americans held zero Senate seats and two House seats. The tribes’ proposed maps β€” the ones they’d offered the legislature during redistricting and been ignored β€” would yield one Senate seat and three House seats. They went to trial in June 2023. On November 17, Judge Peter D. Welte ruled the maps violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The state was ordered to submit a compliant plan. When North Dakota failed to comply, the court imposed the tribes’ own maps β€” the ones the legislature had refused to consider.

In November 2024, three tribal members β€” Marcellais, Davis, and Brown β€” were elected to the North Dakota Senate and House.

The system worked. That’s the verse they teach.

Here are the verses they don’t sing.

On May 14, 2025, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the tribes should never have been allowed to sue at all. Not because they were wrong about the discrimination β€” because, the court said, private citizens don’t have the right to bring lawsuits under Section 2. Only the Department of Justice can. One ruling eliminated voting rights enforcement for private citizens in seven states: Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota.

The Supreme Court stayed that ruling in July 2025, keeping the fair maps in place. The tribes petitioned for certiorari in September. The Court hasn’t agreed to hear it.

Then, on April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court issued Louisiana v. Callais. Six to three. Justice Alito writing for the majority.

The decision struck down Louisiana’s congressional map β€” the one that had elected Cleo Fields, one of the first two Black Louisianians sent to Congress from that state. The Court held that Section 2 challenges now require proof of “present-day intentional racial discrimination regarding voting.” Plaintiffs must “control for party affiliation” β€” meaning if racial voting patterns correlate with party preference, the discrimination doesn’t count.

Justice Kagan, dissenting, noted that Congress specifically amended Section 2 in 1982 to eliminate the intent requirement β€” because proving intent was nearly impossible. The amendment was the entire point. Forty-four years later, the Court put the requirement back. Kagan wrote that the decision “renders Section 2 all but a dead letter.” She ended her dissent with two words: “I dissent.” No respectfully.

Justice Thomas, concurring, went further: Section 2 “does not regulate districting at all.”

Here is where the North Dakota tribal case now sits: even if the Supreme Court overrules the Eighth Circuit and says private citizens can sue β€” the standard they’d have to meet was just made nearly impossible by Callais. The tribes proved discriminatory effect. The court found it. The remedy was applied. It worked. Three tribal members are serving in the North Dakota legislature right now. And the legal foundation under their seats is being demolished while they sit in them.

The consequences are already moving. Tennessee eliminated its only majority-Black congressional district β€” Memphis’s District 9 β€” and repealed its law against mid-decade redistricting. Louisiana suspended its congressional primary and threw out cast ballots. Alabama began gerrymandering ahead of November. Representative Justin J. Pearson of Tennessee called it “the most significant purging of Black political power and elected Black leaders since the end of Reconstruction.”

The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, after Bloody Sunday in Selma. It addressed literacy tests, poll taxes, grandfather clauses, all-white primaries. The Roberts Court has gutted it three times: Shelby County (2013) killed preclearance. Brnovich (2021) raised the bar for challenging voting laws. Callais (2026) killed the effects test. Three decisions. Sixty-one years of protection. The verse they teach is that the Voting Rights Act protects the right to vote. The verse they don’t sing is that the protection now requires proving someone meant to discriminate β€” the exact standard Congress rejected in 1982 because it didn’t work.

Marcellais, Davis, and Brown are serving. The maps are fair. The remedy is working.

The mechanism that created the remedy is being dismantled.

// NEON BLOOD

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