Native leaders, Democrats respond to North Dakota redistricting ruling

Nov. 20—GRAND FORKS — Even if the legislative map hasn't been redrawn yet, last week's ruling ordering North Dakota to redraw its legislative districts to increase Native Americans' voting power was a win for representation for Jamie Azure.

"It shows a lot of our younger generation that has that distrust of government that we don't have to settle," said Azure, chair of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. "It shows these generations if you put in the work, you can achieve it."

Much is still to be decided after a district judge ruled Friday, Nov. 17, that North Dakota's 2021 legislative redistricting effort violated the voting rights of Turtle Mountain Band and Spirit Lake Tribe members and ordered the state to redraw its legislative borders.

State officials have not indicated whether they will appeal last week's decision. Legislative leaders have not said whether they'll call for the second special session of the year to redraw the map in accordance with U.S. District Chief Judge Peter Welte's decision.

A Monday ruling from the Eighth Circuit, which includes North Dakota, could also jeopardize private parties' ability to sue under a provision of the Voting Rights Act on which the tribes' lawsuit hangs.

But the legal victory in North Dakota told Azure that people were paying attention.

"It's good having the hard conversations," he said. "These things open the minds of not only Native people but also the people who want to know what it's like to be a Native in 2023."

Republican elected officials did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Emails and phone calls to North Dakota Secretary of State Michael Howe's office on Friday and Monday were not returned. House Majority Leader Mike Lefor did not respond to email queries on Monday, nor did the North Dakota Republican Party respond to a voicemail left Monday afternoon or a subsequent email.

House Minority Leader Zachary Ista said he had not yet conferred with Lefor on whether another special session would be called, though he said he expected that conversation to take place in the coming days. The Secretary of State and Legislature have until Dec. 22 to "adopt a plan to remedy the violation" of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, according to Welte's ruling.

The two tribes unsuccessfully proposed to the Legislature a single legislative district encompassing both reservations during redistricting in 2021, and Azure said this scenario is still the Turtle Mountain Band's preference.

Ista said if the Legislature does convene to approve the map requested by the tribes, the Democratic-NPL Party would aggressively recruit Native candidates for the redrawn districts or back an incumbent like Rep. Jayme Davis of District 9A, a subdistrict of one of two legislative districts that were the subject of the suit.

"The North Dakota Democratic-NPL has a strong tradition of allyship with Native voters in North Dakota," Ista said. "Certainly there should be a strong candidate for the House or Senate in a redrawn tribal district."

Prairie Rose Seminole of the North Dakota Native Caucus said she hopes to see multiple Native candidates run for office if the map is redrawn and elections are called in 2024.

Davis, an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band, told the Herald she'd initially planned to serve one four-year term when elected in 2022, but would run for one of the new seats if an election was held in 2024.

While she said she was proud of her fellow tribe members for their work on the lawsuit, she'd focused more on a portion of Welte's ruling that focused on the broader underrepresentation of Natives in the state Legislature.

Welte's opinion noted that based on their share of North Dakota's voting-age population, Natives should hold three Senate seats and six House seats. Instead, Indigenous North Dakotans currently hold two House seats and zero Senate seats.

"That would be a great next goal — to fill three Senate seats and six House seats with the representation we should have," Davis said.

On the other hand, Republicans could instead appeal the ruling to the Eighth Circuit, which on Monday ruled there is no "private right of action" for Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in an Arkansas racial gerrymandering case.

In essence, the Eight Circuit ruled that only the federal government could sue under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a key provision under which the tribes sued the state in North Dakota.

Attorney Michael Carter of the Native American Rights Fund, which represented the tribes in the North Dakota lawsuit, said the tribes' case rested on different legal grounds than the Arkansas case.

"We would continue to ask for and to hope the state would do the right thing and propose (the tribes' preferred map)," he said. "The court's made it pretty clear that's what the state should be doing to comply with the Voting Rights Act."

The Democratic-NPL Party has already released a statement to the Herald attacking Republicans for the financial cost of the lawsuit.

"Republican lawmakers ignored tribal leadership and the Voting Rights Act when they drew our current legislative districts," the statement read. "Now North Dakotans will have to foot the bill for this expensive litigation and potentially for yet another special session because of their incompetence."

Ista took a softer tack, but did note both a special session and further litigation would cost the state financially.

Azure, for his part, assumed an appeal was likely. But his spirits were still buoyed.

"People are watching," he said. "People are asking the right questions. ... However this all goes, it's a victory already."

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was updated Tuesday morning, Nov. 21, to note that Lefor did not respond to email queries. The Herald did not reach out by telephone.