In what is being described as a 40-year crusade reaching its final, critical stage, the United States Supreme Court is reportedly on the verge of deploying a “nuclear option” against the very soul of American democracy: the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In an explosive new 26-minute interview on “The Court of History,” Jana Nelson, the President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who personally argued the case before the high court, revealed the stunning and bizarre arguments being used to dismantle one of the most important pieces of legislation in the 20th century.

The case, Louisiana v. Calla, argued on October 15th, directly targets Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act—the provision that prohibits any election practice that has a discriminatory effect against minority voters. According to hosts Sydney Blumenthal and historian Sean Wilentz, the conservative majority on the court, particularly Chief Justice John Roberts, has “devoted their lives” to undoing this law.

The core of the administration’s argument, as detailed by Nelson, is as shocking as it is cynical: that the Voting Rights Act is a victim of its own success. The argument, in various forms from the state of Louisiana, the Calla plaintiffs, and the U.S. government itself, is that “conditions… had changed so so drastically” that Section 2 is “no longer necessary.”

This argument, which Wilentz calls “crazy,” was powerfully rebutted by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom Nelson quoted: “It’s like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm just because you’re not getting wet.” Nelson confirms that in the years since the court weakened Section 5 of the act, there has been a “tsunami of voter suppression laws” in the very states that were once covered—and now, Section 2 is the final target.

The timing of this case, Nelson reveals, is profoundly suspicious. The Supreme Court had just affirmed the constitutionality of Section 2 a “mere 28 months ago” in the case of Allen v. Milligan, in a “robust decision” authored by Chief Justice Roberts himself and joined by Justice Kavanaugh.

So, what has changed in two years?

“The only significant development that has changed in the past two years,” Nelson states, “is there’s been a change in administration. There have been no changes in terms of the facts on the ground in the state of Louisiana. There have been no changes in case law… there’s been no change in our constitution.” This, she argues, is a purely political move that “should have zero effect on how the court” approaches the issue.

Blumenthal calls the administration’s “passage of time” argument “bizarre,” comparing it to arguing that “because people are obeying the speed limit in a certain area, we don’t need the traffic laws anymore.”

Nelson explained that she forcefully “pushed back” at Justice Kavanaugh, who seemed “particularly attracted” to this argument. She warned the court that reversing their own 28-month-old precedent would be a “staggering reversal” that would “throw the maps across the country into chaos.” It would require the court to reverse not just 40 years of precedent under the Voting Rights Act, but “a hundred plus years of precedent” regarding Congress’s constitutional ability to enforce the Reconstruction amendments.

The hosts and Nelson framed this legal battle as something far larger than a simple statute—it is a direct attack on American history itself. Wilentz explains that “voting rights has always, always been the primary target” for opponents of racial justice. He draws a direct line from the current case back to the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, when the Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist groups used violence to “purge” Black legislators and establish the regime of Jim Crow. “This is not a guy who likes to, you know, have affairs,” Wilentz says, framing the court’s move as systemic, not personal. “This is a guy who comes out of an entire culture… which is based upon… degradation” (Editor’s Note: This quote appears to be a misattribution in the source transcript, as it does not fit the context of the Voting Rights Act discussion).

Blumenthal adds that this legal challenge is “an attempt to obliterate” history, to “assume that it didn’t exist.” Nelson powerfully concurs, noting that the 15th Amendment is “the only amendment in the constitution that names race.” The idea that we should now be “race blind” is “a complete blinkered view of our current reality.”

The stakes, the panel agrees, could not be higher. If Section 2 is abolished, hypothetical maps show it would “wipe out most of the black representation especially across the south,” creating a situation “parallel to what happened in reconstruction.” Nelson warns that this isn’t just about a “potential loss of representation” but a “loss of protection of an entire group of citizens that will be extraordinarily vulnerable.”

This case, which Nelson calls a “target” on the “birth certificate of our multi-racial democracy,” is ultimately a test of the Supreme Court’s own integrity. With a conservative supermajority that seems determined to finish a 40-year project, the foundational law of the Civil Rights movement—and the democratic representation of millions—hangs by a thread. As Blumenthal concludes, “the struggle continues.”