Washington: U.S. top court lets North Carolina voter law die, pleasing rights groups. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rebuffed a Republican bid to revive a strict North Carolina voter-identification law that a lower court found deliberately discriminated against black voters, handing a victory to Democrats and civil rights groups.
The justices’ decision not to take up a Republican appeal in the important voting rights dispute set no legal precedent and did not rule out the possibility that the court, with a 5-4 conservative majority, would endorse such laws in future. North Carolina’s law was one of a number of similar statutes passed by Republican-controlled states.
“Today’s announcement is good news for North Carolina voters. We need to be making it easier to vote, not harder,” said North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat who took office in January and asked the court not to take up the case.
The justices left in place a July 2016 ruling by the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that voided the law passed by a Republican-controlled legislature and signed by a Republican governor.
The appeals court found that the law’s provisions “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision” and “impose cures for problems that did not exist,” concluding that the Republican-led legislature enacted it “with discriminatory intent.”
Republicans have said laws like the one in North Carolina are needed to prevent voter fraud. Democrats have said such laws are voter suppression measures intended to make it harder for groups that tend to back Democratic candidates, including black and Hispanic voters, to cast ballots.
The North Carolina law required that certain forms of government-issued photo identification cards be presented by voters, for example allowing driver’s licenses, passports and military identification cards but not public assistance cards used disproportionately by minorities. Other provisions included cutting early voting days and ending same-day voter registration.
The Supreme Court could yet be asked to review a similar Texas law now under challenge in lower courts. In April, a federal judge ruled that the law was enacted with the intent to discriminate against black and Hispanic voters.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a two-page statement indicating the move not to hear the North Carolina case should not be interpreted as saying anything about the merits of the statute. Roberts said one reason for rejecting the case was a “blizzard of filings over who is and who is not authorized to seek review in this court under North Carolina law.”
