Pam Karlan — a professor at Stanford University Law School who, before stepping down last year, helped lead the department’s Civil Rights Division as the principal deputy assistant attorney general appointed by President Biden — says beyond limited resources, there’s also the challenge of the “sheer volume of jurisdictions in the United States that might face a Section 2 case.”

“There are states, counties, school boards, water districts, city councils. I mean, there are just so many different governmental bodies that are subject to Section 2 that the idea that you’d have one body in the Justice Department as the sole enforcement mechanism makes no sense at all,” says Karlan, who declined to comment on why the DOJ decided not to take on the Arkansas case.