A panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has struck down one of the key remaining ways of enforcing the federal Voting Rights Act in seven mainly Midwestern states.
For decades, private individuals and groups have brought the majority of lawsuits for enforcing the landmark law's Section 2 protections against racial discrimination in the election process.
But in a 2-1 ruling released Wednesday, the three-judge panel found that Section 2 cannot be enforced by lawsuits from private parties under a separate federal statute known as Section 1983.
That statute gives individuals the right to sue state and local government officials for violating their civil rights. Section 1983 stems from the Ku Klux Klan Act that Congress passed after the Civil War to protect Black people in the South from white supremacist violence, and voting rights advocates have considered it an antidote to a controversial 2023 decision by a different federal appeals panel that made it harder to enforce Section 2 in the 8th Circuit.