AP:

At issue is a ruling by a federal panel over a lawsuit filed by Republicans challenging the constitutionality of a redistricting map that created House subdistricts encompassing two American Indian reservations. Proponents of the subdistricts said they gave tribal nations better chances to elect their own members. Last fall, a federal three-judge panel tossed out the lawsuit at the request of the state and the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation. The judges wrote that “assuming without deciding” that race was the main factor for the subdistricts, “the State had good reasons and strong evidence to believe the subdistricts were required by the VRA.”

The plaintiffs appealed.

North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley said the three-judge panel decided the matter correctly under existing case law — but for the wrong reason. The state argues in a filing made Monday that it “cannot defend this Court’s ‘assumption’ that attempted compliance with the VRA (or any statute) would justify racial discrimination in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

“We’re not seeking to reverse” the panel’s decision, Wrigley said. “We’re seeking to have it upheld but for the reason that race was not the predominant factor, and we think that we should prevail.”

But critics bashed the move as a questionable legal maneuver as well as an attempt to assault the Voting Rights Act.