Federal Appeals Court Limits Private Lawsuits Under Voting Rights Act

The ruling upholds an Arkansas election law that one person who is not a poll worker can only help up to six voters at polls.

A voter casts a vote on Super Tuesday at Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas, on March 5, 2024. Will Newton/Getty Images

A federal appeals court panel has ruled that private individuals and organizations cannot bring lawsuits under a section of the Voting Rights Act that allows voters with disabilities or language barriers to get help from others.

In a decision issued on July 28, a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals held that only the U.S. Attorney General may bring cases under Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act. That provision guarantees the right of voters who are blind, disabled, or unable to read or write to receive help from a person of their choice at the polls.

“Neither the [Voting Rights Act] nor the Supremacy Clause create a private right of action for Section 208,” Judge L. Steven Grasz wrote for the panel. The Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution establishes that federal law, like the [Voting Rights Act], overrides state law when there is a conflict between the two.

At the center of the case is a 2009 Arkansas law limiting the number of voters an individual can help at the polls. The law states that no one, other than poll workers, “shall assist more than six voters in marking and casting a ballot at an election,” and that poll workers must keep a list of names and addresses of anyone providing such assistance.

Arkansas United, an immigrant rights advocacy group, filed a Section 208 lawsuit to challenge the state’s six-voter cap on Nov. 2, 2020, hours before that year’s general election day. The group contended that the state law could prevent, for example, a teenage child who is fluent in English from translating voting materials for multiple older family members who are not. In 2022, U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks ruled in favor of Arkansas United, saying that such a scenario was “far from implausible.”

With its new ruling, the Eighth Circuit overturned Brooks’s decision by determining that the Arkansas United did not have standing to sue in the first place. The court did not address whether the Arkansas law actually violates Section 208.

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, who represented the state in the case, welcomed the ruling. He has argued in court that the six-voter limit was necessary to prevent interpreters and other aides from unduly influencing voters’ decisions.

“The Eighth Circuit’s decision means that officials can continue to enforce Arkansas’s laws and voters can have confidence in our elections,” Griffin said in a statement on Monday, emphasizing that the state law in question stood unchallenged for over a decade until 2020.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a national civil rights group representing Arkansas United in court, didn’t respond to a request for comment by publication time.

Monday’s ruling aligns with recent decisions from the Eighth Circuit based on the same reasoning that certain voting-rights protections are not enforceable by anyone other than the U.S. attorney general.

In January, the court declined to rehear a case brought by the Arkansas NAACP, which alleged that the state’s federal election redistricting map diluted black citizens’ voting power in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a provision that prohibits racial discrimination in voting practices or procedures.

In a separate case in North Dakota, a group of Native American voters petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene after the Eighth Circuit blocked their Section 2 lawsuit on similar grounds. On July 24, the Supreme Court granted a temporary stay of the Eighth Circuit’s ruling, upholding private enforcement of Section 2 while the justices consider whether to take up the case.