A legal expert flagged an “ominous” order the U.S. Supreme Court slipped into view over a summer weekend that could even further erode voting rights.

The court’s intentions can be difficult to parse through cryptic orders or offhand comments justices make and the questions they ask during oral arguments, but UCLA law professor Richard L. Hasen published a column for Slate Monday analyzing a new filing in a voting case over the drawing of Louisiana’s six congressional districts.

“A technical briefing order in a long-pending case out of Louisiana, posted on the Supreme Court’s website after 5 p.m. on a Friday in August, was ominous,” Hasen wrote. “The order was likely intended to obscure that the court is ready to consider striking down the last remaining pillar of the Voting Rights Act, known as Section 2. Such a monumental ruling, likely not coming until June 2026, would change the nature of congressional, state, and local elections, all across the country, and likely stir major civil rights protests as the midterm election season heats up.”

Louisiana’s population is about one-third Black, but after the 2020 census the state legislature passed a new congressional map over the Democratic governor’s veto that created only one district where Black voters would likely elect their preferred candidate, which is being challenged in the Louisiana v. Callais that was the subject of last weekend’s cryptic order.

“Before Callais, Black voters had successfully sued Louisiana in a case called Robinson v. Ardoin, arguing that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act required drawing a second congressional district giving black voters that opportunity,” Hasen wrote. “Section 2 says minority voters should have the same opportunity as other voters to elect their candidates of choice, and courts have long used it to require new districts when there is a large and cohesive minority population concentrated in a given area, when white and minority voters choose different candidates, and when the minority has difficulty electing its preferred representatives.”

The GOP legislature drew up a new plan after the Robinson challenge that created a second congressional district to otherwise favor Republicans in the state, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, and another group of voters argued in Callais that the new map was a racial gerrymander that violated the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.

“When the Supreme Court first held oral argument in the Callais case in March, it appeared to be another in a long series of cases (many out of Louisiana) in which the court considered whether race or partisanship predominated in the drawing of district lines,” Hasen wrote. “I’ve long written that this is an impossible exercise in places like Louisiana where the factors overlap — most white voters in Louisiana are Republicans and Black voters are Democrats, so when the state discriminates against Democrats it is also discriminating against Black voters.”

Oral arguments in March suggested the court would once again determine whether race or party predominated, but instead of deciding the case by the end of its term in June the justices set up the case for another round of arguments in a move that reminded Hasen of the court’s actions ahead of its eventual ruling in the controversial Citizens United case.

“We waited weeks for the court to issue its rescheduling order and when it came this past Friday it was a doozy,” Hasen wrote. “Although the court’s order did not explicitly mention Section 2 or even the Voting Rights Act more generally — unquestionably to obscure things further — there is no doubting what’s going on here. The court is asking the parties to consider whether Louisiana’s compliance with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by drawing a second majority-minority district … was unconstitutional under a view of the Constitution as requiring colorblindness.”

That would amount to a “sea change” in voting rights, Hasen said, but it would also be in line with what observers have come to expect fro the Roberts Court.

“Court conservatives likely thought teeing up the issue of overruling Section 2 on a hot summer weekend would avoid public notice,” he wrote. “But that’s a short term strategy. Come next June, any decision to strike down what’s left of the Voting Rights Act could kick off the start of a new civil rights movement and more serious talk of Supreme Court reform in the midst of crucially important midterm elections. A court fundamentally hostile to the rights of voters places the court increasingly at odds with democracy itself.”