Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill arrived at the Supreme Court shortly before 10 a.m. on January 9 and took a seat in the spectator section of the columned courtroom. When US Solicitor General John Sauer, the Trump administration’s top courtroom lawyer, entered a few minutes later, he cut across the room to warmly greet her.

Murrill was waiting for ruling in a redistricting case that could unwind protections for Blacks and Latinos under the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The decision could simultaneously boost the GOP’s chances in the US House of Representatives this year.

Louisiana, backed by the Trump administration and several other Republican-controlled states, has its eye on the upcoming midterm elections and told the justices it wanted a decision by early January as it seeks to replace its current congressional map – which includes two court-ordered majority Black districts – with a new map for this year’s midterm elections.

But it did not take long after the justices ascended the bench that day for the gavel to fall. There was no decision in Louisiana v. Callais. Nor has one come since.

Speculation has only grown about the case and its consequences for voters and control of the US House, where the GOP holds a slim margin. (The justices announced on Friday that they will be issuing more opinions later this month.)

The case tests the Voting Rights Act’s Section 2, which prohibits race discrimination, and a remedy that judges have often required when they find that maps have diluted the voting power of Blacks or Hispanics. Such “majority-minority districts” are intended to give them a chance to elect a candidate of choice.

States have been closely watching for Supreme Court action, some of them anticipating an opportunity for relief from earlier court orders and a chance to redistrict before November’s midterm elections. Each week that passes, however, makes it harder for some places to consider such an option. In Louisiana, where primary deadlines were pushed back last year to potentially take advantage of a Supreme Court ruling, deadlines are closing.

Irrespective of what happens in the current cycle, the eventual Supreme Court decision is certain to give states more latitude for 2028 and future elections. That’s because over the past two decades the conservative court has been steadily erasing the racial remedies of the Voting Rights Act and deferring to state legislatures.

So far, the court’s actions in the Louisiana dispute suggest the majority will make it more difficult to bring Section 2 claims. The only question is to what degree. At the most extreme, the court could outright invalidate Section 2’s protection for minorities in the redistricting process.

After a round of oral arguments in an earlier court session, the justices suddenly scheduled a second hearing in Louisiana v. Callais and broadened their review of the Voting Rights Act. Based on that second round of arguments, held last October, the justices appear ready to further limit the protections of the law considered an exemplar of the nation’s civil rights era. The VRA was passed after the March 7, 1965, “Bloody Sunday” attack on marchers as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama.