The U.S. Supreme Court continues to upend the voting rights landscape amid a crucial election cycle that already has tribes and their advocates worried about their power at the polls.

This time, the highest court in the land finally took action on a long-delayed Native voting rights case from North Dakota. In an order on Monday, the justices gave new life to a dispute in which tribes and tribal citizens are challenging a legislative map that they say is illegal.

But unlike a recent decision that has Native advocates reeling, the move in Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Howe is being seen as a positive. Attorneys representing tribal plaintiffs are hoping to prove they are right when the case returns to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals for further litigation.

“The Supreme Court was correct to vacate the Eighth Circuit’s decision, which wrongly prevented Native voters and Tribal Nations from vindicating their rights under the Voting Rights Act,” Lenny Powell, a staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund (NARF), said in a news release on Monday.

“On remand, we will keep fighting to ensure that Native voters have the ability to vote and effect change in their communities,” said Powell, who is a citizen of the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians.

The order comes more than eight months after the Native plaintiffs in Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Howe formally asked the Supreme Court to take up the case. The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, the Spirit Lake Nation and individual tribal voters argued that the Eighth Circuit got it wrong by limiting their ability to sue under the Voting Rights Act, a civil rights era law that has faced renewed scrutiny from Republican politicians.

But instead of taking action on the petition in Howe, the Supreme Court kept delaying consideration, all without providing an explanation even though briefing was completed back in October 2025 for Docket No. 25-253.

Meanwhile, the justices heard and decided Louisiana v. Callais, a closely watched case from Louisiana. Last month, the court — by a vote of 6 to 3 — gutted the protections of the Voting Rights Act, according to NARF and the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI).

“When a Tribal Nation or Native American community’s political voice is diluted, so is its ability to secure good schools, adequate infrastructure, health care access, environmental protections, and economic opportunity, NCAI and NARF said in a joint statement on April 29. “Taking away voting protections, like what happened with today’s decision, makes it harder and at times impossible for Native voters to elect representatives who will respond to their needs.”

In North Dakota, tribes and tribal voters argue that their voice has been weakened by the contested legislative map. Historically, Turtle Mountain and Spirit Lake voters have been able to send three candidates of their choice to the State Legislature, according to the Campaign Legal Center, a non-partisan group that is also part of the litigation.

But immediately following the adoption of the map in 2021, Native voters in the northeastern part of the state were only able to elect one of their preferred candidates to the North Dakota House instead of the usual two. And none were elected to the North Dakota Senate where in the past there had been one chosen.

The landscape began to change as a result of the litigation. In January 2024, a court-ordered map was implemented and later in the year, Turtle Mountain and Spirit Lake voters elected three of their preferred candidates. Elsewhere in the state, voters from the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation retained their preferred candidate.

The picture shifted yet again following an appeal by the state of North Dakota. In May 2025, the Eighth Circuit ruled that private parties — such as tribes and individual Native voters — cannot bring a lawsuit to enforce the Voting Rights Act.

As a result, the Native plaintiffs weren’t able to explain why the contested legislative map was discriminatory and wouldn’t be able to do so whenever future disagreements arise. But with Monday’s action by the Supreme Court, the Eighth Circuit’s ruling was vacated, or set aside, giving the tribes and tribal voters another shot at proving how their power is being diluted based on race.

“Today, the Supreme Court agreed that courts cannot slam the courthouse doors on plaintiffs seeking equal representation,” said Mark Gaber, senior director for redistricting at the Campaign Legal Center. “We will keep fighting to defend the rights of Native American voters.”

Still, the Callais decision — which has been widely condemned by Democrats and civil rights advocates — looms large. Monday’s order specifically states that North Dakota voting map dispute is being “remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for further consideration in light of Louisiana v. Callais.”

As is usual practice, the order did not offer any details for why the justices took such action in Howe. But a hint of what’s going on behind the scenes arose thanks to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is the first African American woman on the Supreme Court.

In a three-sentence dissent, Jackson pointed out that Callais had nothing to do with the issue in Howe — whether private parties can sue under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. “Thus I see no basis for vacating the lower court’s judgment,” she wrote on Monday.

Rather, Jackson pointed to the Supreme Court’s precedent in Morse v. Republican Party of Virginia. In 1996, the justices — by a vote of 5 to 4 — agreed that private parties can indeed sue under the Voting Rights Act.

“Instead, in light of Morse v. Republican Party of Va., 517 U. S. 186 (1996), I would summarily reverse,” Jackson wrote in the final sentence of her dissent, asserting that the Eighth Circuit’s decision in Howe is wrong in light of the decades-old precedent.

Jackson offered a similar rationale in connection with another voting rights matter that the Supreme Court had kept in limbo for several months. In an order on Monday, the justices directed the federal court for the Southern District of Mississippi to take another look at a case known as Board of Election Commissioner v. NAACP.

Jackson, who was nominated by former president Joe Biden, was in the minority for Callais. Along with Justice Sonia Sotomayor, she joined a dissent authored by Justice Elena Kagan that criticized the “gutting” of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. All three jurists were nominated by Democratic presidents.

“Under the Court’s new view of Section 2, a state can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power,” Kagan wrote in the dissent on April 29.

The six justices who voted to limit the reach of the Voting Rights Act in Callais were nominated by Republican presidents. Three of them were chosen by President Donald Trump, whose highest-ranking Supreme Court attorney recently struggled to explain whether American Indians are birthright citizens of the United States.

“The Voting Rights Act is a fundamental promise of fair representation, but under this Supreme Court and Republicans in Congress, that promise is being undermined at every turn,” said Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-New Mexico), who serves on the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.

Regardless of the leanings of the justices, tribes and their advocates have long worried about going to the Supreme Court — because they frequently have been at the losing end of the stick. Between 2006 and 2016, for instance, a period that coincided with the arrival of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., tribes lost 9 out of 11 cases.

“This court is a court that is willing and able to rewrite everything — including the foundations of federal Indian law as we know it,” Melody McCoy, a senior staff attorney at NARF, said during NCAI’s executive council winter session in Washington, D.C., earlier this year.

NARF and NCAI formed the Tribal Supreme Court Project in 2001 to address the dismal win-loss rate that was seen at the time. McCoy, who is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, said the initiative has led to some notable successes over the last two decades.

“We’ve kind of flipped the record — so in the last decade, tribes have won 70 percent of your cases in the U.S. Supreme Court,” McCoy said at NCAI’s meeting on February 11.

“We still need to do more”: Melody McCoy currently leads the Tribal Supreme Court Project. @NCAI1944 and @NDNRights are celebrating 25th anniversary of initiative to help tribes with Supreme Court cases. Anniversary report coming later this year. #DC pic.twitter.com/5HFILMVAwx

— indianz.com (@indianz) February 11, 2026

McCoy also pointed out that the justices haven’t heard any Indian law cases for two terms in a row. But she warned that dangers remain for tribes and their citizens when it comes to their fundamental rights.

“We have a court that is still very hostile to tribal sovereignty,” said McCoy, attributing it to “some members” of the court.

“We have other members who are very appreciative of tribal sovereignty, but it’s really, you know, a wild card with this court,” McCoy added.

As the Howe case continues, NARF and NCAI are observing a major milestone of the Tribal Supreme Court Project. In March, the two organizations released a 25th anniversary report that cited the reversal of the win-loss record. A celebration is scheduled to take place September 17-18 in Washington, D.C.