The phrase came from a Republican.

Jim Bolin served in the South Dakota Legislature for sixteen years. When he described how redistricting worked in 2011 and 2021, he didn’t mention fairness. He mentioned the Voting Rights Act. He called it a “silent partner in the room.” There was, he said, “a strong feeling on the part of the Legislature that they didn’t want to get sued again.”

That sentence tells you everything. The VRA didn’t make South Dakota draw fair maps because South Dakota wanted fair maps. The VRA made South Dakota draw fair maps because the alternative was federal court.

The silent partner wasn’t justice. It was liability.

And liability worked.

In 1981, under federal pressure, South Dakota created its first majority-Native American legislative district. In 1991, the legislature created District 28 — split specifically to protect the voting rights of Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux tribal members. Over the decades that followed, Native lawmakers won seats from those VRA-shaped districts: Tom Shortbull, Dick Hagen, Troy Heinert, Red Dawn Foster, Tom Van Norman, Theresa Two Bulls, John Flynn, Edward Iron Cloud III, Peri Pourier, Kevin Killer. Ten names. Each one elected because the silent partner was in the room.

On April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court asked the silent partner to leave.

Louisiana v. Callais, 6-3. Justice Alito, writing for the majority, gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by imposing a new intent requirement on redistricting challenges. Under the old Thornburg v. Gingles framework from 1986, challengers could prove vote dilution through discriminatory effect — you didn’t have to prove the legislature meant to discriminate, just that the maps had that result. Callais rewrote the standard. Now challengers must present “strong evidence of present-day intentional racial discrimination regarding voting.”

Justice Kagan, dissenting: “Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter.”

Justice Thomas, concurring: Section 2 should never have applied to redistricting at all.

In 1982, Congress explicitly amended the VRA to eliminate the intent requirement after the Court imposed one in Mobile v. Bolden. Forty-four years later, the Court reimposed it.

The ruling was April 29. The dominoes started falling before the ink dried.

Tennessee’s Republican legislature drew and passed a new map eliminating their sole majority-minority House district. Florida passed a redistricting bill the same day Callais was decided. Alabama filed an emergency motion to reinstate legislature-drawn maps that had been struck down in Allen v. Milligan, and the Court granted it. Louisiana — the state in the case — suspended its May 16 primary after more than 100,000 early votes had already been cast and 42,000 absentee ballots submitted, so the maps could be redrawn.

Analysts project Republicans could gain up to twelve House seats from redistricting in the Southeast alone.

In Wyoming, Secretary of State Chuck Gray didn’t wait. He sent letters to the governor and the Fremont County Commission citing Callais, demanding that House District 33 be “examined.” District 33 is the only district in Wyoming with a majority Native American population, encompassing the Wind River Reservation communities of Fort Washakie, Ethete, and Arapahoe. It is held by Rep. Ivan Posey, an Eastern Shoshone educator — the only enrolled tribal member in the entire 62-member Wyoming Legislature.

“Drawing districts based on race is a blatant violation of the United States Constitution,” Gray said. He is also running for Congress.

The Northern Arapaho Business Council’s response: “The Secretary of State’s actions are particularly offensive because they target the very communities that were here long before the State of Wyoming existed.”

Wyoming’s legislators, to their credit, haven’t moved. At a May 22 committee meeting in Lander, Senator Cale Case, a Republican, argued that the districts reflect “community of interest” rather than race, noting that tribes have sovereign status distinct from municipalities. Representative Steve Johnson, also a Republican, put it more plainly: “I think we’d be better off to not poke the dog, the sleeping dog, and just let it go.”

The sleeping dog. Not the right thing. Not the fair thing. The sleeping dog.

On May 18, the Supreme Court vacated the Eighth Circuit’s ruling in Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Howe and remanded it for reconsideration under Callais. Spirit Lake and Turtle Mountain tribes sued North Dakota over gerrymandered legislative maps and won at trial. The Eighth Circuit said they couldn’t sue at all. The Court corrected the standing issue — private plaintiffs can bring Section 2 claims. But the case now returns to a courtroom where the effects test that won it no longer exists.

The Native American Rights Fund noted that it has “never lost on the merits of any redistricting lawsuit it has brought on behalf of Native people and Tribes.” Every case cited was won under the old standard.

South Dakota redistricts in 2031. The silent partner will not be in the room. Jim Bolin told you what the room looks like with it — a legislature drawing fair maps because they didn’t want to get sued. He didn’t say they drew fair maps because they believed in fair maps. He said the quiet part, quietly, and it tells you everything about what happens next.

The deterrent was never justice. It was consequences.

The consequences are gone.

The room will show you what it always wanted to do.

// NEON BLOOD

Sources: South Dakota Searchlight · NARF on Callais · NARF on Turtle Mountain remand · Native News Online · Wyoming Public Media · Gillette News Record · Center for American Progress · Louisiana v. Callais