 As NPR's Hansi Luwong reports, this ruling risks weakening legal protections against racial discrimination in the elections process. For decades, private individuals and groups have brought the majority of lawsuits against a state or local government for violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. But a federal judge in Arkansas ruled in 2022 that private individuals and groups are not allowed to sue to enforce that law because they are not explicitly named in the words of Section 2.