CONTENT WARNING: The following content contains details of sexual violence and may be harmful or traumatizing to some readers.

When L.B., a Northern Cheyenne woman, called the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to her house for help, she was hoping to receive support. Instead, she was sexually assaulted by a law enforcement officer who was sworn to protect her.

In October 2015, L.B. called the police to report that her mother was driving while intoxicated. Shortly after, a BIA officer arrived at L.B.’s house dressed in uniform in what started out as a routine visit. The officer entered her home and asked L.B. if she was alone. L.B. explained that her children were sleeping in another room and admitted to having a couple of drinks that evening. The officer proceeded to administer a breathalyzer test. When she did not pass the test, he accused her of child endangerment, threatened to arrest her, and then threatened to contact social services and have them take her children away from her.

The threats left L.B. visibly distraught and fearful of losing her children and her job. The officer then used his threats and power as a law enforcement officer to prey on her and force her to have sex with him. What started out as a call for help quickly turned into a threatening situation that ended in sexual assault.

Reports of sexual violence against Native women and the failure of law enforcement agencies to address these abuses are, unfortunately, far too common within Native communities. More than four in five Native American women reported being survivors of sexual violence during this last year. But on reservations in Montana and across the country, reports of sexual violence are almost never prosecuted as a result of racial and gender-based discrimination and legal loopholes that leave Native women unprotected against sexual violence.

One of these legal loopholes stems from a 1978 U.S. Supreme Court decision that eliminated tribal criminal jurisdiction over non-Indian perpetrated crimes on tribal lands. This prevents tribes from being able to prosecute the majority of violent crimes committed against their citizens in their own homes, including crimes of sexual violence. The Supreme Court’s decision in Oliphant, in most cases, leaves the federal government as the only government with jurisdiction to prosecute a sexual assault committed against a Native woman on tribal lands. But when federal law enforcement officers are the perpetrators themselves, it’s even more unlikely these women will receive justice. This is why we filed an amicus brief in support of L.B. and calling for law enforcement to be held accountable for committing and perpetuating sexual violence against Indigenous women.

Federal law enforcement has historically failed to protect against, and has often perpetuated, racialized and gender-based violence against Indigenous women and girls. Law enforcement is typically unresponsive to tribal needs, open cases languish unresolved, and wrongdoers exploit these gaps to prey on Native women and girls. This is critical for tribal citizens where sexual assault, human trafficking, and other forms of violence have reached crisis levels, especially for women and girls.

Native communities have frequently expressed frustration about the difficulty of being heard by federal authorities. Fear and mistrust of the government is the result of generations of broken promises and is an ongoing barrier to reporting. Because reservations can be policed by as few as half a dozen BIA officers, survivors of sexual misconduct by these officers rightly are concerned that they will have to interact with their abusers again in the future, discouraging them from coming forward. And when survivors do come forward, they face legal barriers to receiving justice.

In the L.B. case, the Montana Supreme Court will decide whether state law holds federal agencies accountable when one of its law enforcement officers uses their power and authority over a citizen to commit sexual assault. The officer who raped L.B. was convicted of rape and sentenced in May 2018 to three years in federal prison. In L.B.’s ensuing civil lawsuit for damages, however, a federal judge found the government was not liable for the BIA officer’s actions because the officer was “not acting in the scope of his employment” at the time of the rape. L.B. appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which in August sought guidance from the Montana Supreme Court.

In the 1990s in Maguire v. State, the Montana Supreme Court suggested that sexual assault falls outside the scope of ordinary employment, which arguably includes law enforcement. The consequence of the Montana Supreme Court’s decision in Maguire is that women and children who are sexually assaulted by federal law officers within the state of Montana cannot sue the federal government, nor can they hold a federal law enforcement agency responsible for the actions of its officers.

This hole in the law disproportionately affects Native women living on tribal lands, since they are the population in Montana most likely to encounter federal law enforcement. Native women already experience the highest rates of sexual assault and violence in the United States, leaving them vulnerable to sexual assault in the hands of federal law enforcement officers — with no institutional recourse. If federal law enforcement isn’t held accountable when their officers abuse their authority, it only ensures that sexual violence against Native women Montana will continue to escalate.

As redistricting ramps up nationwide following the U.S. census, the state of South Carolina has not been forthcoming about its schedule for drawing new electoral lines. In fact, even though this process only happens once a decade and determines the political power of millions, the legislature just adjourned for the fall, delaying the process by months as the 2022 election cycle fast approaches. And we don’t know when they are coming back. That’s why the ACLU and NAACP Legal Defense Fund filed a federal lawsuit demanding that the state establish a concrete, transparent redistricting schedule. South Carolinians deserve to know when their electoral maps will be drawn — and that they will be drawn fairly.

Redistricting is not easy. To achieve equal population among districts while respecting existing communities and complying with relevant laws, the Supreme Court has emphasized that redistricting requires a meticulous, “intensely local” analysis. This analysis requires local input. Yet the legislature has held minimal hearings, many only in person despite the delta variant of COVID-19, and many at times that do not work for working people.

The analysis also takes time. Yet, on Sept. 22, the state House announced it would adjourn for the fall without proposing new maps. On Sept. 24, the state Senate followed suit, noting there was no point in coming to work if proposed bills, including redistricting bills, were just going to “languish” until the House returned. Neither the legislature nor the governor has committed to convening a special session to fulfill their once-in-a-decade, time-consuming, and time-sensitive obligation. Although the legislature has claimed that delays are attributable to COVID-19 pushing the release of federal census data to the states, that’s just more reason not to adjourn.

The legislature’s abrupt decision to delay the redistricting process presents an immediate problem. Right now, the state House, state Senate, and U.S. congressional districts in South Carolina are severely out of proportion. That’s because they were last drawn with population data from 2010, after the last census. But South Carolina’s population has shifted significantly since then, such that some districts now have far too many residents and others too few. For example, South Carolina’s Sixth Congressional District is now almost 12 percent underpopulated, while the First Congressional District is almost 12 percent overpopulated. This means that, at this very moment, the people of the First District are having their voices diluted.

Candidates for political office at all levels are also harmed. They and their supporters do not know where their voters will be and therefore cannot begin mobilizing them. This is particularly true for independent candidates and their supporters, who need to take the additional step of collecting thousands of signatures ahead of the March 30 deadline just to get on the ballot. Until the legislature reconvenes and passes new, legally compliant maps — and the governor signs them into law — the current, unfair maps will stay intact.

Map-making also takes time because, especially in South Carolina, maps are virtually always challenged in court to ensure compliance with the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act. South Carolina’s maps have been litigated every decade since the Voting Rights Act was passed — in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. Many of those times, a court had to throw out the state’s proposed maps because they violated the law. Most of these cycles, it took about four to six months for the court to hear and resolve the case. One cycle, it took years. In other words, even if the legislature came back today, they’d be cutting pretty close for comfort.

In fact, if legally acceptable maps are not passed in time, a court may have to order the illegal ones to stay in place simply to avoid voter confusion prior to the filing deadlines, primaries, and general election. That perverse result would be directly attributable to the legislature’s unacceptable delay. That’s why we need the court to step in now.

South Carolina’s legislature must make the redistricting process more transparent. It must also provide adequate time for local input on, and inevitable litigation concerning, their proposed new district lines. The public must be fully engaged to ensure that all communities are fairly represented by the advocates of their choice. Too much is at stake. Redistricting affects representation, and representation affects everything else, from our schools to our health care to our criminal justice system. South Carolinians demand maps that are fair and representative, and for that they need a transparent, trustworthy process to get them there.

Across the country, politicians are using every trick in the book in their attempts to ban abortion and force people to stay pregnant against their will — and they’re trying to recruit the Supreme Court to help them. Today the Supreme Court will review a case — brought by EMW Women’s Surgical Center, which is represented by the ACLU — about one of those attempts: Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s last-minute effort to intervene in a case challenging a Kentucky abortion ban already declared unconstitutional by two courts.

The specific question before the court is a narrow, procedural one, but if the court rules for Cameron, it will open the door for him to put this unconstitutional ban into effect. As the court prepares to hear our case, here’s what to know.

The Kentucky law at issue in the Supreme Court case cannot be viewed in isolation. This year, politicians passed a record number of laws restricting and banning abortion — more than 100 this year alone.

In September, five justices turned their backs on the Constitution by allowing Texas’ radical new abortion ban, S.B. 8, to go into effect. The court effectively stripped Texans of their constitutional right to abortion in the dead of night. With a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade set to be heard this term by the court, the reproductive freedom of people across the country is on the line.

Since Roe was decided in 1973, state legislatures have been chipping away at abortion access, passing more than 1,300 restrictions that aim to force people to remain pregnant. Though many have been blocked by courts, too many have gone into effect and created unnecessary barriers to abortion, including laws that prevent people from using their insurance to pay for an abortion, that force people to make unnecessary trips to the clinic, and that force clinics to shut down. All of these laws push abortion further and further out of reach and as a result even today the right to have an abortion is a right in name only for too many people.

After we challenged the ban on behalf of EMW Women’s Surgical Center in 2018, the attorney general decided not to defend the law and got out of the case. The case went forward against other officials from the state, and after the trial, the court ruled in our favor and declared the law unconstitutional. And when that decision was appealed, the Sixth Circuit affirmed that was correct and that the law violated Kentuckians’ constitutional rights. It was only at the eleventh hour, after the appeals court issued its decision, that the attorney general came back and asked for another bite at the apple. But the court ruled that he was too late.

The law in question in this case bans a specific abortion procedure that has been standard medical practice for decades. If the abortion ban goes into effect, it would essentially ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy in Kentucky. Other restrictions in the state include:

• Requiring patients to have a face-to-face consultation with a doctor at least 24 hours before an abortion;
• Forcing patients under 18 to get permission from a parent or judge in order to have an abortion;
• Requiring doctors to provide an ultrasound, narrate fetal development, and make the heart tones audible regardless of whether the patient wants to hear it;
• Prohibiting private insurance from covering abortion in most circumstances, and completely for public employees; and
• Prohibiting the use of telemedicine to prescribe medication abortion pills, even during a pandemic.

Due to laws like these, abortion access in Kentucky has been decimated — only two providers remain, essentially forcing pregnancy on many individuals who can’t otherwise get care. And only one provider, EMW Women’s Surgical Center (the plaintiff in the case), provides abortion beyond the earliest stages of pregnancy. Kentucky politicians have done everything they can to push the procedure out of reach in the commonwealth, including passing a six-week ban that was ultimately blocked in the lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of EMW. This case is yet another effort to push an extreme agenda.

Because of systemic racism and structural inequality in our country’s healthcare system, abortion restrictions fall hardest on people of color, low-income people, youth, immigrants, LGBTQ people, people in rural areas, and other marginalized communities. Preventing people from obtaining the abortion care they need and forcing them to carry pregnancies against their wishes poses an increased risk to their very lives, especially for Black women, due to the disproportionate impacts of the maternal mortality crisis.

Too many people live in places where Roe has been rendered meaningless by anti-abortion restrictions designed to harass, guilt, and shame patients out of seeking abortion care, or block the care entirely. Many of these restrictions don’t ban abortion outright but chip away at access by forcing patients to delay care, shutting down clinics, and making abortion unaffordable for low-income communities.

Congress could prevent this. Before it now is a bill that would protect the constitutional abortion rights of all people, no matter where they live. The Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA) would provide a nationwide safeguard against abortion bans and medically unnecessary restrictions that push abortion care out of reach. The House has already passed the WHPA, and now it’s the Senate’s turn. Send a message to your Senator today.