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In a 2-1 decision Friday, a panel of North Carolina judges struck down the state’s voter ID law, saying Republican lawmakers who passed it were motivated “at least in part by an unconstitutional intent to target African American voters.”
The decision is another blow to nearly a decade of Republican efforts to require photo identification at the polls in North Carolina, but it’s not the final word. It likely will be appealed to the state Supreme Court, and there are two other cases pending – one in state court, one in federal – targeting the law.
The decision doesn’t change anything at the ballot box for now because the court had already forbidden the state from requiring photo ID at the polls while the issue works its way through the courts. Municipal elections scheduled for this fall were set to go without the requirement, despite a majority of North Carolina voters adding a photo ID requirement to the state constitution in a 2018 referendum.
But the more detailed rules that the General Assembly’s Republican majority passed in the wake of that referendum, laid out in Senate Bill 824, targeted voters based on race, Superior Court Judges Michael O’Foghludha and Vince Rozier said in their decision Friday.
The judges, both Democrats, based their decision on much of the same logic used to strike down a previous North Carolina voter ID law, 2013’s House Bill 589.
“In reaching this conclusion, we do not find that any member of the General Assembly who voted in favor of S.B. 824 harbors any racial animus or hatred towards African American voters,” the judges wrote. “But rather, as with H.B. 589, that the Republican majority ‘target[ed] voters who, based on race, were unlikely to vote for the majority party. Even if done for partisan ends, that constitute[s] racial discrimination.’”
Sam Hayes, general counsel for House Speaker Tim Moore, said the ruling would be appealed.
“Once again, liberal judges have defied the will of North Carolinians on election integrity,” Hayes said in a statement. “Senate Bill 824 is one of the most generous in the country, and it was modeled on those of other states. At trial, plaintiffs could not produce a single witness who would be unable to vote because of the law.”
Last month, a three-judge panel in North Carolina ruled the state had to restore voting rights for nearly 55,000 people on parole or probation for a felony.
