The US Supreme Court's 8-to-1 decision on the Voting Rights Act Monday represented an apparent compromise – resolving a broad legal challenge to the landmark law without undercutting the main force of it.

The high court ruled that a small utility district in Texas was eligible for an exemption from mandated federal oversight of its local elections.

That new, more expansive, interpretation of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act allowed the high court to sidestep a much larger constitutional challenge that loomed over the case – and over the high court itself.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court compromised Monday in a major voting rights case, finding that a powerful enforcement tool in the landmark Voting Rights Act was being applied too broadly.

The Supreme Court avoided the larger constitutional issue in the voting rights case.

However, the decision avoided the larger issue of whether the federal government should continue to have oversight to ensure that local areas are free of voter discrimination.

Sometime in the next few weeks, the Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder, a frontal challenge to the constitutionality of the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act. Under that section of the law, changes in election procedures in covered jurisdictions that might affect minority voting power must be submitted to the Justice Department for approval.

Word went out from the White House even before the first rhetorical shots had been taken at Sonia Sotomayor: Keep your powder dry.

The last thing the administration needed, senior aides to President Obama made clear to their liberal allies both publicly and privately, was a war with conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich over whether the judge is a racist. Stay on message, they counseled, and we will offer a clear case about her credentials and legal experience.

In a landmark ruling that could affect state judicial elections nationwide, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday said that due process can require a state judge to recuse when a party in a case before him or her has had a "significant or disproportionate" influence on placing the judge on the court through an outsized campaign donation.