VOTING LAW VOIDED:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit has blocked a North Carolina law requiring photo identification after determining that it was passed “with discriminatory intent” to restrict voting by minorities. Voter ID laws have been running into challenges in appellate courts, including one in Texas that was blocked last week.
WASHINGTON — Three years after the Supreme Court deemed a key anti-discrimination provision of the Voting Rights Act unnecessary, a federal court Friday ruled a subsequently imposed North Carolina law requiring photo IDs at polling places was aimed at discouraging minority turnout.
The move likely gives Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign a boost by removing potential voting barriers that would have fallen hardest on AfricanAmericans and other Democratic-leaning voters.
The strongly worded decision by a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., blasted the Republican-led state Legislature, all but charging lawmakers with racism.
“Because of race, the legislature enacted one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history,” Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote for the panel, all Democratic appointees. “We can only conclude that the North Carolina General Assembly enacted the challenged provisions of the law with discriminatory intent.”
The decision, which reverses a lower court ruling, is a major victory for the state’s NAACP chapter, the Obama administration and others who sued to overturn the law. And it marked the third time in 10 days that a federal court concluded a voter identification law enacted by a GOPled state government threatened voting rights.
Last week, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ordered Texas state officials to take steps to help minority voters disproportionately affected by that state’s voter identification requirement.
And in Wisconsin, a federal judge threw out multiple aspects of its voter ID law, leaving the law itself intact but ruling unconstitutional many of its restrictions.
Civil rights groups say such laws put an undue burden on poor and minority voters, who may not have valid photo IDs or would encounter difficulties obtaining them. Such people also tend to vote for Democrats, leading critics to allege the laws are intended to help Republican candidates.
The move may prove particularly critical in North Carolina, which emerged as a swing state after record numbers of African-American voters helped Barack Obama carry it in 2008. North Carolina had not backed a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976.
Gov. Pat McCrory pledged to appeal.
North Carolina and other Republican- l ed states, including many in the South, enacted new voter ID laws almost immediately after the Supreme Court in 2013 struck down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which had required states and municipalities with a history of discrimination to seek clearance from the federal government before changing voting rules.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court’s 5-4 decision that the special scrutiny for the South was outdated, brushing aside pleas from civil rights advocates who warned that the protections were still necessary.