Apparently the other constitutional law lecturer in the White House (yes, Vice President Biden lectured for years at Widener Law School) also didn’t read NAMUDNO. Anyone who did should have known that simply leaving the Voting Rights as is would lead to another Supreme Court decision about it.
I’ll repeat the question that Rick Hasen posed:
Ironically, I think if this were the bill introduced in 2006 to amend the VRA, it would not only have passed both Houses of Congress and become law, the Supreme Court would have been very likely to uphold the measure as constitutional despite its constitutional problems.
As an aside, a former colleague told me she took Biden’s class at Widener. She relayed that he showed up once or twice during the semester, and just told some stories. He didn’t actually teach anything. Unsurprising in light of his own law school prowess, where he plagiarized his law review article, and graduate 76th in his class of 85 at Syracuse University College of Law.