XPost: alt.politics.elections, alt.politics.usa.republican, alt.   
   an.rush-limbaugh   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns, sac.politics   
   From: hruffe@csu.edu   
      
   A federal appeals court on Wednesday shut down the ability of private   
   individuals to bring Voting Rights Act lawsuits challenging election   
   policies that allegedly discriminate based on race in several states, a   
   major blow to the civil rights law that has long been under conservative   
   attack.   
      
   The ruling, which leaves enforcement of the VRA’s key provision to the US   
   attorney general, comes as the Trump Justice Department is gutting its   
   civil rights division and pivoting away from the traditional voting rights   
   work. The DOJ, for instance, dropped major lawsuits previously brought   
   against Texas and Georgia.   
      
   The new ruling from the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals covers the seven   
   midwestern states covered in the St. Louis-based Circuit. The opinion   
   means that in those states, only the Justice Department can bring lawsuits   
   enforcing a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, which was passed by   
   Congress in 1965 to address racial discrimination in election policies.   
      
   The 2-1 ruling from the 8th Circuit said that a separate civil rights law,   
   known as Section 1983, did not give private individuals the right to bring   
   VRA cases. That question had been left unanswered in a previous ruling   
   from the circuit that said the VRA itself conferred no private right of   
   action.   
      
   Those rulings cut against decades of cases successfully brought by   
   individual voters to challenge election policies that violate the VRA by   
   discriminating based on race. Several of the cases traveled up to the   
   Supreme Court and produced rulings affirming the lower court decisions in   
   the voters’ favor, supporting the long-term understanding that the VRA   
   gave private individuals ability to enforce the law with lawsuits.   
      
   While some conservative justices have questioned whether such private   
   lawsuits could be brought under the VRA, the high court has never   
   addressed the question directly.   
      
   The 8th Circuit’s Wednesday opinion, written by George W. Bush-appointee   
   Raymond Gruender and joined by Donald Trump appointee Jonathan Kobes,   
   concluded that Congress had not “unambiguously” conferred a private right   
   of action in the VRA text, while asserting that it needed to do so under   
   Supreme Court precedent.   
      
   A dissent from 8th Circuit Chief Judge Steve Colloton, a George W. Bush   
   appointee, pushed back on that reasoning.   
      
   “Since 1982, private plaintiffs have brought more than 400 actions based   
   on §2 that have resulted in judicial decisions. The majority concludes   
   that all of those cases should have been dismissed because §2 of the   
   Voting Rights Act does not confer a voting right,” Colloton wrote.   
      
   The new ruling stems from a lawsuit alleging that North Dakota   
   discriminated against Native Americans in its state legislative   
   redistricting plan.   
      
   “If left intact, this radical decision will hobble the most important   
   anti-discrimination voting law by leaving its enforcement to government   
   attorneys whose ranks are currently being depleted,” Mark Graber, senior   
   director for redistricting at Campaign Legal Center, which is representing   
   the Native Americans, said in a statement. “The immediate victims of   
   today’s decision are North Dakota’s Native American voters, who a trial   
   court found were subjected to a map that discriminated against them on   
   account of race.”   
      
   North Dakota’s Secretary of State office, which was defending the maps,   
   did not respond to CNN’s inquiry.   
      
   If they seek to appeal the ruling, the Native American voters could seek a   
   review by the full 8th Circuit – a court made up of almost entirely of GOP   
   appointees – or they could take it straight to the Supreme Court, and its   
   6-3 conservative majority.   
      
   The latter path risks the gamble that the conservative majority would   
   adopt the conclusions of the 8th Circuit panel, which would end nationwide   
   privately brought lawsuits under the VRA’s relevant provision and leave   
   that provision’s enforcement to the US attorney general alone.   
      
   Meanwhile, there has been a mass exodus under the second Trump   
   administration of career officials in the DOJ Civil Rights Division, which   
   houses the department’s voting section, and the Department has been   
   backing out of longstanding voting rights cases.   
      
   In 2013, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority gutted a separate   
   section of the VRA that required states with a history of racial   
   discrimination in voting practices to get federal approval for changes in   
   election policy.   
      
   CNN’s Ethan Cohen contributed to this report.   
      
   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/federal-appeals-court-deals-major-   
   blow-to-voting-rights-act/ar-AA1EN4zO   
      
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