Court permanently strikes down Montana law that restricts voting rights of Native Americans [View all]

https://indiancountrytoday.com/the-press-pool/court-permanently-strikes-down-montana-law-that-restricts-voting-rights-of-native-americans-9DuRa03fCkaBFglKOqmz7w

Court permanently strikes down Montana law that restricts voting rights of Native Americans

Press Pool
Sep 28, 2020

Ruling stems from lawsuit brought by ACLU and Native American Rights Fund
News Release

American Civil Liberties Union

A Montana court permanently struck down a state law today that severely restricted the right to vote for Indigenous people living on rural reservations.

Western Native Voice v. Stapleton, filed in March of this year by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Montana, and Native American Rights Fund (NARF), challenged the so-called Montana Ballot Interference Prevention Act (BIPA), a law that imposed severe restrictions on ballot collection efforts that are critical to Native American voters living on rural reservations.

The law set an arbitrary limit on the number of ballots an individual could collect and also restricted the categories of individuals who were permitted to collect ballots. These limitations were intended to suppress turnout on rural reservations, where geographic and socioeconomic barriers to voting make ballot collection even more critical.

In the introduction of the order the court wrote, “the questions presented cannot be viewed through the lens of our own upbringings or own life experiences, but through the lens of the cold, hard data that was presented at trial about the clear limitations Native American communities in Montana face, and how the costs associated with … (“BIPA”) are simply too high and too burdensome to remain the law of the State of Montana.”