Jane Timm for NBC News:

A Supreme Court order last week blocking Wisconsin’s redistricting map is sparking fresh concerns among advocates that the high court may soon sound the death knell for what’s left of the Voting Rights Act.

Experts warn that after gutting a provision of the landmark 1965 law that required some jurisdictions to submit election law changes to the Justice Department, the Supreme Court is now signaling it might curtail statutory language that’s served as the chief federal protection for minority voters in the U.S. since then.

And they say Wednesday’s Supreme Court order — unsigned and decided on an emergency request without oral arguments — was a shot across the bow for Section 2 of the voting rights law that prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color or membership in certain minority language groups.

“All of the signs point toward Section 2 being yet another death by a thousand cuts victim at the Supreme Court,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine.