Yvette Borja

That the barest possible majority of justices suddenly decided they were unwilling to drown a statute the Court has spent decades dangling inches above the water’s surface felt equal parts genuinely surprising and vaguely farcical.

Higher education may soon become even whiter, more exclusive, and hard-to-access in our multiracial democracy, courtesy of the predominantly white, elite, and detached-from-reality Supreme Court.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been on life support for the past decade, mortally wounded by the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, and wound salted in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee just two terms ago. This left many court watchers—and maybe even some justices—wondering whether the Court would finish the job in Allen v. Milligan. But a 5-to-4 majority issued a surprising ruling in the case on Thursday that keeps Section 2 of the act breathing, however shallowly.