When an attorney argues his or her first U.S. Supreme Court case, it tends to be a fairly low-profile appeal. 

But that was hardly the case for Deuel Ross, who made his high court debut last October in a case that potentially held the fate of a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act case. The court's decision to take up the case had worried voting rights activists in light of recent rulings weakening or outright gutting different provisions of the civil rights-era law.