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In news that is sure to slow the momentum of the D.C. House Voting Rights Act, the Post has a front page story this morning about how lawyers at the Department of Justice believe that the measure is unconstitutional. An unpublished opinion from the department’s Office of Legal Counsel was apparently rejected by Attorney General Eric Holder, who instead asked the solicitor general’s office to weigh whether the government could defend the legislation if it was challenged in court. It could, states the article.

Questions about the constitutionality of the legislation have been raised since it was first conceived by D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and former Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), though legal opinions have so far defied ideological lines. Conservative legal scholars such as Kenneth Starr and Viet Dinh have vouched for the legislation, while the more liberal George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley has regularly inveighed against it.

Today’s news will likely give opponents of the legislation additional ammunition, both on the question of constitutionality and in criticizing Holder’s decision to seek opinions on the legislation outside of the Department of Justice. Republicans can portray Holder’s move as political, the last thing an already reeling Department of Justice needs after the numerous controversies that came out of it during the latter years of the Bush administration.

Ultimately, it will have to be the courts that decide, provided the legislation makes it through the House (and even that is in question at this point). The legal community is fairly split on the constitutionality of the measure, but that debate shouldn’t be reason to keep it from passing congressional muster, should it?