In Brakebill, et al. v. Jaeger, Native American voters challenged North Dakota’s new, restrictive voter ID law, which imposes mandates that will disproportionately affect Native Americans and, in many cases, block them from voting entirely. Anyone who lives on a reservation or in a rural area, for example, will be unable to satisfy the new law’s address requirements.
The district court enjoined the state from putting the law into effect. Voters didn’t have to comply with the it in the primary. Since then, the secretary of state’s office has been operating as if that injunction would remain in place.
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With just a month left, voters might not even have time to try to comply with these requirements before Election Day. Even if they did, it’s not clear the state could keep up. The district court found about 20 percent of those expected to vote wouldn’t meet the new ID requirements. Around 18,000 people wouldn’t be able to provide either adequate ID or supplementary documentation.
Neither precedent nor policy swayed the Eighth Circuit, which hears federal appeals from Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and the Dakotas.
The Eighth Circuit decided on Sept. 24 that the state law should go into effect after all. The Supreme Court didn’t back the Eighth Circuit until Tuesday, less than one month before the November election.
