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Reading the tea leaves from cryptic Supreme Court orders can be perilous business because the justices are not bound by the questions they ask at oral argument, the offhand comments they make at a judicial conference, or even their monumental “shadow docket” rulings on emergency petitions that have become all too common. But a technical briefing order in a long pending case out of Louisiana, posted on the Supreme Court’s website after 5 p.m. on a Friday in August, was ominous. The order was likely intended to obscure that the court is ready to consider striking down the last remaining pillar of the Voting Rights Act, known as Section 2. Such a monumental ruling,

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