n early October, the Supreme Court will be presented with one of the most important voting rights cases of the last two decades. The case, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Mukasey, will decide the constitutionality of Section 5 of the recently reauthorized Voting Rights Act. If the plaintiff--a small, residential subdivision of 3,500 people north of Austin, Texas--prevails, racial gerrymandering, among other distortions to our body politic, will be greatly diminished. So it comes as no surprise that these groups--all of them defenders of racial gerrymandering--have joined the fray.
Although the lawsuit is complex, the central issue to be resolved by the justices is whether Section 5, a "temporary" provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, can still be applied today to a handful of mostly southern states and jurisdictions, which include the Austin district.
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