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Federal Appeals Court Strikes Down North Carolina Voter ID Provision Federal Courts Strike Down Voter ID Restrictions in North Carolina and Wisconsin
(about 3 hours later)
A federal appeals court decisively struck down North Carolina’s voter identification law on Friday, saying its provisions deliberately “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision” in an effort to depress black turnout at the polls.A federal appeals court decisively struck down North Carolina’s voter identification law on Friday, saying its provisions deliberately “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision” in an effort to depress black turnout at the polls.
The sweeping decision upended voting procedures in a presidential-election battleground state barely three months before Election Day. It tossed out North Carolina’s requirement that voters present photo identification at the polls and restored voters’ ability to register on Election Day, to register before reaching the 18-year-old voting age, and to cast early ballots, provisions the law had fully or partially eliminated. The sweeping 83-page decision by a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upended voting procedures in a battleground state about three months before Election Day.
The court also restored a provision that ensured that the ballots of people who mistakenly voted at the wrong polling station were deemed valid The ruling tossed out North Carolina’s requirement that voters present photo identification at the polls and restored voters’ ability to register on Election Day, to register before reaching the 18-year-old voting age, and to cast early ballots, provisions the law had fully or partly eliminated.
The ruling by a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, was an abrupt reversal of a late April decision in Federal District Court that Republicans had savored after years of bruising legal and political battles. Although the circuit panel praised a federal judge in Winston-Salem, N.C., for his “thoroughness,” it left little doubt about its view of voting practices in North Carolina, where Republicans pushed through a major overhaul beginning in 2013. The court also held that the ballots of people who had mistakenly voted at the wrong polling station should be deemed valid.
“We cannot ignore the record evidence that, because of race, the legislature enacted one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history,” said the decision, which Republicans said they would appeal. In another decision on Friday, a federal judge ruled that parts of Wisconsin’s voter ID law are unconstitutional. Noting that “a preoccupation with mostly phantom election fraud leads to real incidents of disenfranchisement, “ the judge, James Peterson, ordered the state to make more forms of identification acceptable. He also overturned certain restrictions on absentee balloting and early and weekend voting.
“In holding that the legislature did not enact the challenged provisions with discriminatory intent, the court seems to have missed the forest in carefully surveying the many trees,” the appeals court wrote. “This failure of perspective led the court to ignore critical facts bearing on legislative intent, including the inextricable link between race and politics in North Carolina.” The court decisions — the third and fourth federal rulings in recent weeks against Republican-enacted voting restrictions — were made as the two political parties raced from their summer conventions into the critical final months of the campaign, with Wisconsin, like North Carolina, considered a contested state.
Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina, who signed the disputed law, did not immediately comment, but the General Assembly’s Republican leadership issued a blistering response to the court. North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature rewrote the state’s voting rules in 2013 shortly after the Supreme Court struck down a section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that had given the Justice Department the power to oversee changes in election procedures in areas with a history of racial discrimination. Forty of the state’s 100 counties had been subject to oversight.
“Since today’s decision by three partisan Democrats ignores legal precedent, ignores the fact that other federal courts have used North Carolina’s law as a model and ignores the fact that a majority of other states have similar protections in place, we can only wonder if the intent is to reopen the door for voter fraud, potentially allowing fellow Democrat politicians like Hillary Clinton and Roy Cooper to steal the election,” Senator Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore said in a joint statement that referred to the Democratic presidential nominee and the party’s candidate for governor of North Carolina. “We will obviously be appealing this politically motivated decision to the Supreme Court.” Civil rights advocates and the Justice Department had sued to block the law, but a Federal District Court judge upheld it in April, writing that the state’s “significant, shameful past discrimination” had largely abated in the last 25 years and that the law was not motivated by bias.
The three judges who decided the case were nominated to the appeals court by President Bill Clinton or President Obama. (One of them, however, had originally been named by President George W. Bush in 2003 to a vacant seat on the Federal District Court in South Carolina.) On Friday, the three-judge panel emphatically disagreed, saying the lower court’s amply documented ruling had failed to consider critical aspects of the legislature’s action, including “the inextricable link between race and politics in North Carolina.”
Critics of the state’s voting procedures declared victory after the decision by the appellate panel’s judges. The judges noted that Republican leaders had drafted their restrictions on voting only after receiving data indicating that African-Americans would be the voters most significantly affected by them.
“We see today as a moral and constitutional vindication of our constitutional critique of this extremist legislature and our extremist governor,” said the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, the president of the North Carolina branch of the N.A.A.C.P. “A political majority doesn’t give you the power to run roughshod over the Constitution.” “We cannot ignore the record evidence that, because of race, the legislature enacted one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history,” they wrote. “The court seems to have missed the forest in carefully surveying the many trees,” they stated. The panel stopped short of reimposing federal oversight on the state’s elections, saying that striking down the law was enough.
Mr. Barber’s group was among the organizations that were joined by the Justice Department in challenging the law. A lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which also opposed the law in court, said the panel’s ruling was “a stinging rebuke of the state’s attempt to undermine African-American voter participation.” Voting rights advocates called the ruling, which Republicans say they will appeal, a resounding victory. Fresh from speaking Thursday night at the Democratic National Convention, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, the president of the North Carolina branch of the N.A.A.C.P., which is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, called the decision “a moral and constitutional vindication of our constitutional critique of this extremist legislature and our extremist governor.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch praised the decision at a news conference on Friday afternoon in Baton Rouge, La., where she had been meeting with the police and community groups. She said North Carolina’s law “sent a message that contradicted some of the most basic principles of our democracy.” “A political majority doesn’t give you the power to run roughshod over the Constitution,” he said.
“The ability of Americans, the ability of all of us to have voice in the direction of their country, to have a fair and free opportunity to help write the story of this nation, is fundamental to who we are, to who we aspire be as citizens and as Americans,” she added. “And going forward, the Department of Justice will continue our work to protect this sacred right.” Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, who was in Baton Rouge, La., on Friday, also welcomed the decision, saying the law “sent a message that contradicted some of the most basic principles of our democracy.
North Carolina first passed a version of the law in 2013, after a United States Supreme Court decision that diluted the power of the Voting Rights Act. The law’s supporters contended that it was a safeguard against fraudulent elections and voter misconduct. “The ability of Americans to have a voice in the direction of their country — to have a fair and free opportunity to help write the story of this nation — is fundamental to who we are,” she said.
“Common practices like boarding an airplane and purchasing Sudafed require photo ID, and thankfully a federal court has ensured our citizens will have the same protection for their basic right to vote,” Mr. McCrory said after the Federal District Court’s ruling in April. Republicans denounced the opinion as wrongheaded and politically motivated, particularly because the three judges who decided the case had been nominated to the appeals court by either President Bill Clinton or President Obama. (One of them, however, had originally been named by President George W. Bush in 2003 to a vacant seat on the Federal District Court in South Carolina.)
But to critics like Mr. Barber, who addressed the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, Mr. McCrory’s words masked the intent of a law they viewed as discriminatory and as an effort to restrict access to the polls. “Since today’s decision by three partisan Democrats ignores legal precedent, ignores the fact that other federal courts have used North Carolina’s law as a model and ignores the fact that a majority of other states have similar protections in place, we can only wonder if the intent is to reopen the door for voter fraud” in November’s federal and state elections, State Senator Phil Berger and the House speaker, Tim Moore, said in a statement. They pledged to appeal the ruling.
Although the law the Fourth Circuit ruled against on Friday was multifaceted, the most discussed provision was one that offered voters a bitterly disputed choice: produce one of six accepted forms of identification, such as a driver’s license or a passport, or cast a provisional ballot. So did Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican who is locked in one of the country’s tightest races for governor. “Photo IDs are required to purchase Sudafed, cash a check, board an airplane or enter a federal courtroom,” Mr. McCrory said. “Yet three Democratic judges are undermining the integrity of our elections while also maligning our state.”
The Fourth Circuit’s decision, announced about a month after the panel heard arguments in Richmond, Va., was of intense interest to both parties, which know that North Carolina could well prove decisive in this autumn’s presidential election. Mrs. Clinton has already advertised heavily in the state, and Donald J. Trump visited on Monday night. Republicans in the state legislature have long justified the law’s restrictions on voting by saying they were aimed at ending rampant voter fraud. The law “re-establishes a confidence in our election process, and therefore our government,” a principal sponsor, State Senator Bob Rucho, said in 2013.
On Friday, the appeals court dismissed that argument, saying the restrictions “constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist.” Academic studies have repeatedly concluded that fraud at the ballot box — the sort that photo identification requirements might reduce — is already vanishingly rare.
The North Carolina decision, combined with earlier rulings against voter-identification laws in Texas and Wisconsin, could figure in November’s elections. Friday’s ruling stated pointedly that whether or not the North Carolina restrictions were driven completely by racial bias, they were clearly designed to impede a bloc of minority voters that has long been a major element of the Democratic base.
North Carolina has become a swing state in national elections in recent years in no small part because the protections of the Voting Rights Act allowed black voter turnout to approach that of whites, the court stated.
North Carolina is being sharply contested in the current election: Hillary Clinton is already advertising heavily in the state, and Donald J. Trump held a rally there as the Democrats opened their convention on Monday.
The state ended its decades-long history of backing Republican presidential candidates in 2008, when Barack Obama eked out a narrow victory there. But in 2012, Mitt Romney reclaimed the state for the Republicans.The state ended its decades-long history of backing Republican presidential candidates in 2008, when Barack Obama eked out a narrow victory there. But in 2012, Mitt Romney reclaimed the state for the Republicans.
This year, Democrats are resting their hopes on a strong turnout among black voters as they try to counter Mr. Trump’s appeal among North Carolina’s white, working-class voters.This year, Democrats are resting their hopes on a strong turnout among black voters as they try to counter Mr. Trump’s appeal among North Carolina’s white, working-class voters.
The clauses that were overturned in the North Carolina law, labeled the Voter Information Verification Act, or V.I.V.A., made voting harder in a number of ways. A much-discussed provision, which took effect this year, required voters either to produce one of six accepted forms of identification, such as a driver’s license, passport or military ID, or cast a provisional ballot.
Critics argued that some voters lacked those documents and that the law omitted some forms of identification, such as student IDs, held by blocs of voters who favor Democrats.
Among the other provisions, which were in effect during the 2014 elections, one of the most criticized shortened the state’s early voting period to 10 days, from 17. Voting rights groups charged that this would crimp African-American voter turnout, in part by eliminating one of the Sunday voting days on which black churches typically transported worshipers to a voting site.
Friday’s opinions were just the latest setbacks in recent weeks to advocates of photo IDs and other voting restrictions. The Wisconsin ruling, which appeared likely to be appealed, came only days after a different federal judge issued a separate ruling on that state’s voter ID law, which has been the subject of a legal battle since the Republican-held State Capitol approved it in 2011.
In the ruling earlier this month, a judge said Wisconsin voters without photo identification could vote in November if they presented affidavits swearing to their identities.
In Texas, a federal appeals court has ruled that the state’s photo ID law, among the nation’s toughest, must be softened to eliminate its discriminatory impact. A lower court had said that the law violates the Voting Rights Act and that as many as 600,000 Texans lacked any of the photo IDs the law demands.