On Tuesday September 14, Federal Judge Karen Schreier ruled in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union and four American Indians from the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations in Bone Shirt v. Hazeltine. The ACLU filed the case on behalf of Alfred Bone Shirt, Belva Black Lance, Bonnie High Bull, and Germaine Moves Camp in response to South Dakota voter redistricting in 2001.
Judge Schreier ruled that the South Dakota Legislature under the Secretary of State Joyce Hazeltine violated the 1965 Federal Voting Rights Act, which was established to prohibit state government discrimination against marginalized groups of people through redistricting. The state legislature redrew district lines in accordance with the 2001 law requiring new boundaries to be drawn after each federal census. The new lines created a "supermajority" of indigenous voters into a single voting district; thus diluting the voting power of American Indians in South Dakota.
Judge Schreier gave South Dakota's Legislature and secretary of state Hazeltine 45 days to submit a plan that would change voting lines in two districts, 26 and 27. According to the online news source Indianz.com Schreier explained that "the South Dakota 2001 Plan resulted in unequal electoral opportunity for Indian voters," she continued by saying that the state must "afford Indians in both Districts 26 and 27 a realistic and fair opportunity to elect their preferred candidates." One of the plaintiffs, Bone Shirt, explained that Schreier's ruling was "a milestone in correcting a system that has alienated my people from the political process."
