Supreme Court sends Voting Rights Act cases in Mississippi and North Dakota back to lower courts

On May 18, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court issued 8-1 GVR (grant-vacate-remand) orders in two redistricting cases, vacating lower court rulings and sending them back for reconsideration. Both orders cited the Court's April 29, 2026, decision in Louisiana v. Callais as the controlling new precedent. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, nominated by President Biden and confirmed 53-47 in April 2022, was the lone dissenter in both orders. The Court's unsigned orders each read: judgment VACATED and case REMANDED for further consideration in light of Louisiana v. Callais.

A GVR is a procedural tool that lets the Court clear a case from its docket without hearing full argument or writing a merits opinion. It tells the lower court: a major legal change happened — now reconsider your ruling in light of it. GVR orders don't settle the underlying legal question and have no precedential effect.

The Mississippi case traces back to December 2022, when the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP and 14 individual voters sued the State Board of Election Commissioners, arguing the 2022 legislative maps diluted Black voting power in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Black residents make up about 40 percent of Mississippi's population but the maps gave them fewer majority-Black districts than the VRA required, the plaintiffs argued.

A three-judge federal panel ruled in July 2024 that the maps violated Section 2 and ordered new majority-Black districts created in the DeSoto County area, around Hattiesburg, and in Chickasaw and Monroe counties. Mississippi was ordered to hold special elections in those new districts.

The November 4, 2025, special elections in Mississippi changed the balance of power in the state legislature. Democrats flipped Senate District 2, where Theresa Gillespie Isom defeated Republican Charlie Hoots, and Senate District 45, where Johnny DuPree defeated Republican Anna Rush. Democrats also flipped one House seat. Those three victories reduced Republican senators from 36 to 34 — one fewer than the 35 needed for a supermajority in the 52-member chamber — ending 13 years of GOP supermajority control.

Monday's Supreme Court order vacates the federal panel's ruling that required those elections. The case returns to the district court, which must now reconsider whether the original maps violated Section 2 under the stricter Callais standards.

The North Dakota case, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Howe, was filed in February 2022 by the Spirit Lake Tribe, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, and individual Native voters. They argued North Dakota's 2021 legislative map diluted Native American voting power in Districts 9 and 15, making it impossible for Native voters to elect their preferred candidates in regions where they're a significant share of the population.

A federal district court ruled in the tribes' favor and ordered a new map. But on May 14, 2025, the Eighth Circuit vacated that ruling, holding that Section 2 of the VRA can't be enforced by private plaintiffs — only the Justice Department can bring those suits. The Supreme Court stayed the Eighth Circuit decision on July 24, 2025, while the tribes sought Supreme Court review.

The core legal issue in the North Dakota case is whether private individuals and groups — like the Turtle Mountain Band or the Mississippi NAACP — have a right to sue under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The Eighth Circuit said no; only the DOJ can sue. The Fifth Circuit reached the opposite conclusion in November 2023, ruling that private litigants do have a right to bring Section 2 claims.

This circuit split matters enormously: in the seven states covered by the Eighth Circuit (Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota), no private party can currently sue to enforce Section 2. Only the DOJ can — and the Trump administration's DOJ has dropped inherited VRA enforcement lawsuits and argued in favor of narrowing the law.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's dissent in both orders argued that remanding in light of Callais made no sense because Callais didn't address the private-right-to-sue question. In the North Dakota case, she wrote: "Thus I see no basis for vacating the lower court's judgment." She argued the Court had an obligation to resolve the circuit split directly rather than sending the case back to a court that had already ruled private suits impermissible under Section 2.

Notably, Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — who dissented in Callais alongside Jackson — did not join Jackson's dissent in the GVR orders. The 8-1 vote to remand signals even the liberal wing didn't see the remands as requiring a dissent, though Jackson drew the line at the Court's failure to resolve the private-right question.

The Callais ruling, decided 6-3 on April 29, 2026, was written by Justice Samuel Alito, who was appointed by President George W. Bush and confirmed 58-42 in January 2006. Alito's majority — joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett — rewrote the standards plaintiffs must meet to win a VRA Section 2 vote-dilution case.

Before Callais, courts applied the three-part Gingles test established in Thornburg v. Gingles (1986), which required plaintiffs to show: (1) the minority group is large and compact enough to form a majority district; (2) the minority votes cohesively; and (3) white voters vote as a bloc to defeat minority candidates. Callais added a new requirement: plaintiffs must now also prove intentional discrimination, a far higher burden that Congress explicitly chose not to include when it amended Section 2 in 1982.

The practical consequence of the GVR orders is that Mississippi Republicans now have a clear legal pathway to reclaim their supermajority. If the district court reconsiders the case under Callais and finds the NAACP can't meet the new intentional-discrimination standard, the court-ordered districts that produced the November 2025 elections could be invalidated — and Mississippi could redistrict back to maps closer to its original 2022 lines before 2027 elections.

The Brennan Center's Michael Waldman called the Callais ruling a "devastating setback in the long fight for equality" in political representation. The Campaign Legal Center warned that voters in seven states "lose the right to fight for fair representation" because private suits under Section 2 are now blocked in the Eighth Circuit.

The broader redistricting landscape after Callais is moving fast. Florida's legislature passed a new congressional map within hours of the April 29 ruling that eliminated a majority-Black district. Tennessee Republicans passed a map removing the state's only majority-minority House district. At least six states — Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Vermont — introduced legislation to create state-level Voting Rights Acts in response, because federal Section 2 protection has narrowed dramatically.

Democracy Docket's research found the Callais ruling derailed 28 active lawsuits defending minority voting rights nationwide. The two GVR orders from May 18 add Mississippi and North Dakota to that count, with both cases returning to lower courts to navigate new legal terrain that largely favors states seeking to defend existing maps.