This month, the United States Supreme Court will adjudicate on a case, the effects of which will make fundamental statements about race relations in contemporary USA and, most likely, open the gates to a multitude of similar actions that, ultimately, may reshape the legal prescriptions for race relations across the country.

The case is particularly fascinating coming before the Supreme Court under Barack Obama’s historic presidency.

A small Texas district is challenging the constitutionality of Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. In documents submitted in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder (’NAMUDNO’), the district argues, among other things, that Section 5 ’strikes at the heart of federalism, injecting the federal government directly into the state and local legislative process’.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark achievement for civil rights and the civil rights movement in the US and has been described as the movement’s most successful piece of legislation. It brought legal end to the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and outlawed all discriminatory voting practices that were responsible for the disenfranchisement of Blacks.

Section 5 of the Act requires that the federal government’s Department of Justice ’preclear’ any attempt to change ’any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting...’ in any ’covered jurisdiction.’ A covered jurisdiction that seeks to obtain Section 5 Preclearance, either from the United States Attorney General or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, is required to demonstrate that a proposed voting change does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of discriminating based on race or color. The burden of proof under Section 5 is on the covered jurisdiction to establish that the proposed change does not have a retrogressive purpose.

States covered under Section 5 are the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia (except for eight counties and three independent cities); some towns in Michigan and New Hampshire; and some named counties in Florida; California, New York, North Carolina and South Dakota.

When the Voting Rights Act was signed into law by Democratic President Lyndon B Johnson, Section 5 had a five-year lifespan; it was to expire in 1970. Instead, it was extended again and again, most recently in 2006 by the Bush administration which gave it a further 25-year extension.

The challenge to Section 5 that is before the Supreme Court is more than a challenge to an intrusive federalism. The Texas District has found support among commentators, Congressmen and Congresswomen, groups and individuals for its argument that the data on which the Act stands is now obsolete and that the historical moment in which the Act was introduced is no longer relevant. A brief for the Texas District, quoted by CBS, argues that the Section’s portrayal of the American South ’...unfairly demeans current residents of all races in covered jurisdictions and diminishes both the progress our country has made and the gravity of the evils the civil-rights movement fought to overcome...[Congress has treated] racism as an inheritance that runs with the land rather than a manifestation of attitudes and actions of living individuals.’

The CBS report agreed, citing statistics and the opinions of several prominent legal minds, that America is ’racially transformed’, that today most Southern states have higher Black voter registration than some states not covered by the Act, that more than 900 Blacks hold political office in Mississippi alone, and that the Act-the original intention of which was integration-has in fact created a ’black legislative class’, elected from safe minority districts, who are removed from mainstream politics and so isolated that they do not develop the skills necessary to win votes in racially mixed locations.

Underwriting the legal challenges to Section 5 now-a factor which did not obtain in 2006 when the Act was last extended-is the fact of Obama’s presidency. White American comedians to columnists, as the months pass and the Obama family settles into the White House, hold up as a truism that they voted for Obama so they cannot be racist. By extension, there is a pervasive thinking that an America with Obama as its leader is now a post race America, that America is now racially transformed.

The arguments before the Supreme Court and its ultimate judgement will test the ’post race America’ slogan. I wonder if June is too soon to conclude that America has changed.