SCOTUS could gut the Voting Rights Act even further.

In November of 2017, Latasha Holloway sued the City of Virginia Beach, arguing that the at-large city council elections illegally diluted the voting power of minorities. She found it peculiar that a city made up of 31.6% minority voters had only ever elected six minority candidates to the City Council since the at-large system was put in place 50 years prior.

Just a few years later, the district court ruled in Latasha’s favor, agreeing that the city’s at-large election method violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act because it denied Hispanics, African Americans, and Asians equal access to the political process — and ordered the city to adopt a new electoral system that complied with the Voting Rights Act. This monumental victory would ensure that minority voters would have their voices heard, and their candidates wouldn’t be crowded out by the white-majority voters who made up 70% of the population.

Now, that legal process is in danger.

Just over a week ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that only the federal government could bring suits under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and there was no right for private citizens to file their own. Even though the majority of challenges to discriminatory voting and electoral practices come from private citizens (like Latasha) and civil rights organizations, this ruling would prevent them from defending their rights.

The Voting Rights Act is one of the most consequential achievements of the civil rights movement and helped undo decades of discrimination against voters of color, especially in former Confederate states. For years, the Voting Rights Act has been under attack by actors that wish to dismantle protections for minority voters and benefit their preferred candidates.

The Eighth Circuit’s decision will almost certainly be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. But that doesn’t mean that they’ll do the right thing. Over the last few years, the Supreme Court has often found itself siding with groups who wish to weaken the Voting Rights Act — and we should all be concerned that they will do it again.

In the last decade, we’ve seen the U.S. Supreme Court issue some of the most extreme rulings in our nation’s history. Just last year, the Supreme Court significantly weakened the government’s ability to regulate firearms, by ruling that gun regulations must have historical analogues to be constitutional. For the first ever, they’ve taken away a previously-held constitutional right by overturning Roe v Wade. In 2013, they made Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act — which required states with a history of racial voting discrimination to get clearance from the federal government before changing election laws — unenforceable. And within the next few months, they very well may invalidate one of the best tools that local prosecutors have to deal with gun violence and make it easier for domestic abusers to obtain firearms.

These misguided rulings by the Supreme Court frighten me — as they should frighten all of us.

When the case is appealed to the Supreme Court, which I have no doubt it will be, they could decide it in a way that takes away individuals’ rights to sue under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act forever — eroding decades of legal precedent and endangering the future of our democracy.