There was an opinion in 2009 (don't want to look up the name) where the Supreme Court basically said that if Congress doesn't rework or repeal Section 5 in the next few years, we're going to get rid of it. Kennedy joined in this, so it was rather obvious then that Section 5 was on extremely weak ground. Since then, Congress has done nothing.
When muon2 talked about how aggressive the Justice Dep't was going to be in Section 5 enforcement, I pointed out this decision, and said they wouldn't likely go after anything except for Texas and maybe Virginia because of abject fear of losing the power.
You were quite right. I looked at a purely political gain with the first Democratic White House during a redistricting year and overlooked the desire for the department to maintain their role in redistricting in future decades. OTOH, I have been skeptical of the survivability of section 5.
SCOTUS is not going to strike down the VRA in its entirety.
They wouldn't have to. They would just need to rule that Section 2 and Section 5 do not apply to redistricting. It's a little out there, but certainly within the realm of possibilities.
I can imagine striking section 5, particularly since Congress came close to that during the last decade. I don't see section 2 going away since there is too much weight of precedence defining the parameters of its application to redistricting. I expect that tightening the applicability will happen during this decade depending on which states have their cases go to SCOTUS.
