As I explained back in August, the Supreme Court reached and and in the most opaque way on a late Friday afternoon in mid-summer, the Court turned a ho-hum racial gerrymandering case where the court had to determine whether race or party predominated (something the Court has had to deal with numerous times before) into a case where the constitutionality of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is now squarely in the conservative Justices’ cross-hairs.

Oral argument in Callais is ongoing now. Janai Nelson, head of the LDF, argued in favor of Section 2’s continued constitutionality. She did an excellent job, but it may not be enough. The conservative Justices have asked questions that indicate that the very race consciousness that Section 2 requires in order to remedy race discrimination is i

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