North Carolina voters can put their minds at ease for now — the Supreme Court has killed a restrictive voting law after refusing to review the pending case, North Carolina v. North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP.
According to The New York Times, the long-pending case could have produced the biggest voting rights ruling since the justices four years ago invalidated a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. However, due to the Supreme Courts decision not to review it, the North Carolina law cannot be enforced.
The Republican-backed 2013 law imposed several voting restrictions including a voter ID requirement, reduced early-voting hours and a prohibition on registering to vote and casting a ballot on the same day.
Voting rights groups sued North Carolina, arguing that the law was enacted to disenfranchise black and Latino voters. Though the groups had support from the Obama administration, a federal judge nevertheless disagreed with their claims and upheld the law's voting changes.
North Carolina residents of color received hopeful news last summer, however, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit reversed the judge's ruling, agreeing that the state legislature's law-passing was done with discriminatory intent. The court said it reeked of Jim Crow, targeting racial minorities "with almost surgical precision."
“We cannot ignore the recent evidence that, because of race, the legislature enacted one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history,” wrote Judge Diana Motz at the time.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the 2013 decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act, urged the public not to breathe that sigh of relief yet. In a statement, the chief justice wrote that the Supreme Court's refusal to hear the case "imports no expression of opinion upon the merits of the case," meaning that if North Carolina or another state could pass a similar law, as the courts have not definitively proven that such a law is unconstitutional.
Still, this development brings some sort of hope. “Today’s announcement is good news for North Carolina voters,” newly elected Democrat Governor Roy Cooper said in a statement. “We need to be making it easier to vote, not harder.”
“We are grateful that the Supreme Court has decided to allow the Fourth Circuit’s ruling to stand, confirming that discrimination has no place in our democracy nor our elections,” Allison Riggs, an attorney with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, noted in a statement. “This ruling sends a strong message that lawmakers in North Carolina should stop enacting laws that discriminate based on race.”
“An ugly chapter in voter suppression is finally closing,” Dale Ho, the voting rights unit leader of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.
Given the significance of voting suppression on the very communities that often most need the help of our elected-officials, we surely hope this decision is a step in the right direction toward a true democracy.
