The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review a lower court ruling, effectively ending a key legal tool used to protect minority voters in seven states.
By refusing to take up an Arkansas-based lawsuit, the justices left in place a 2025 appeals panel decision affecting Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
The ruling came from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which found that private individuals and groups cannot sue to enforce Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act.
Section 208 generally allows voters with a disability or an inability to read or write to receive voting assistance from a person of their choice.
The Supreme Court’s decision arrives less than two months after its conservative supermajority issued a major ruling that further weakened the Voting Rights Act, triggering widespread redistricting activity across the country.
In May, the high court also declined to weigh in on the question of a private right of action in two cases brought by Black voters in Mississippi and Native American voters in North Dakota.
For decades, enforcement of Voting Rights Act provisions has been driven primarily by lawsuits filed by private individuals and advocacy organizations, not federal authorities.
That landscape began to shift after conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch issued a single-paragraph opinion in 2021 questioning whether a private right of action existed under the law.
Republican officials in multiple states have since advanced the novel legal argument that only the U.S. attorney general holds the right to bring lawsuits under these sections of the Voting Rights Act.
Legal experts warn that such an interpretation would lead to a sharp decline in voting rights litigation, given the Justice Department’s limited resources and shifting priorities across presidential administrations.
The case the Court refused to hear was brought by Arkansas United, an immigrant advocacy group that has provided Spanish-language interpreters at polling sites for voters with limited English proficiency.
Arkansas United challenged a state law banning anyone who is not a poll worker from assisting more than six voters in casting their ballots.
A federal judge ruled in 2022 that the Arkansas law violated Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act, but GOP state officials appealed the decision.
The 8th Circuit panel subsequently found that private groups such as Arkansas United do not have the legal standing to bring this type of lawsuit.
The 8th Circuit remains the only federal appeals court to break with decades of legal precedent on the question of private enforcement rights under the Voting Rights Act.
