NEW TOWN – Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Supreme Court in New Town will hear oral argument today in a lawsuit that seeks to restore tribal voting rights to 75-80% of Three Affiliated Tribes members who live and work off the Fort Berthold Reservation.

Raymond Cross of Tucson, Ariz., and Marilyn Hudson of Parshall filed the complaint in fall 2018 against individual members of the tribal business council seeking the restoration of the right of all tribal members to participate fully in their government, including the right to vote by absentee ballot. The lawsuit is under the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968.

Since 1986, enrolled tribal members have been required by their constitution to return to Fort Berthold Reservation to vote in tribal elections.

“This requirement applies to these voters regardless of whether any demonstrable factor such as physical disability, military service, poverty, family duties and responsibilities, employment conditions, scholarship and college attendance conditions and/or an adverse medical condition prevents them from complying with this requirement,” said Cross in a press release.

By contrast, he said resident Three Affiliated Tribes voters can relatively easily secure regulatory exemptions from this “physical appearance” to vote in tribal elections requirements.

Cross said the MHA Supreme Court now wants to hear argument as to whether the risk of infection from COVID-19 constitutes a new and substantial burden on non-resident Three Affiliated Tribes voters’ exercise of their tribal voting rights. More particularly, he said it wants to hear whether the tribal business council’s imposition of its “return to the reservation” to vote requirement in the presence of the COVID-19 infection risk violates the non-resident Three Affiliated Tribes voters’ due process and equal protection rights that are guaranteed to them by the tribe’s Constitution and the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968.

He said the MHA Supreme Court also wants to hear argument whether a recent decision and order regarding the Texas voting rights plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction in Hinojosa v. Abbott applies to the facts and issues in this case. In that case, the judge reasoned that Texas’ requirement of “in person” voting at established polling sits imposed “irreparable harm” upon all prospective Texas voters regardless whether or not they were younger than 65 years of age. The judge ordered the Texas attorney general and that state’s other voting rights authorities to make mail-in ballots available to all eligible Texas voters.