![]() “Before enacting that law, the legislature requested data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices. The panel of judges ruled that there was so much information in the record that they did not need to remand the case to the district court, and could determine that Schroeder made an erroneous factual finding on their own.įor example, the circuit-court decision makes much of the fact that legislators requested relevant data before passing the bill. ![]() In the end, it was Schroeder’s lengthy work on the case-a nearly 500-page opinion, plus 25,000 pages of record-that seemed decisive in the circuit-court decision. While a bill had been under consideration, the Shelby County decision led state Senator Tom Apodaca to comment, “Now we can go with the full bill.” Though commonly referred to as a voter-ID law, similar to those passed or considered in other states, many advocates saw the other provisions as equally or more important. ![]() The GOP undertook a program of conservative reforms, overturning a tradition of bipartisan moderation in the state. But in 2010, Republicans captured both houses of the legislature, and two years later McCrory defeated Lieutenant Governor Walter Dalton, as Mitt Romney edged Obama. In 2008, Barack Obama narrowly won North Carolina in the presidential election. The district court clearly erred in ignoring or dismissing this historical background evidence, all of which supports a finding of discriminatory intent. The General Assembly enacted in the immediate aftermath of unprecedented African American voter participation in a state with a troubled racial history and racially polarized voting. “Not coincidentally, during this period North Carolina emerged as a swing state in national elections,” Motz drily noted. The circuit court rebuked Schroeder, saying that the district court had “fundamentally erred” and “seems to have missed the forest in carefully surveying the many trees.” For example, Friday’s decision noted, black participation in elections had been rising steadily in the year before the law passed, periodically bolstered by federal intervention. In North Carolina's recent history, however, certainly for the last quarter century, there is little official discrimination to consider,” he wrote. “There is significant, shameful past discrimination. In April, federal district-court Judge Thomas Schroeder upheld the law, finding that plaintiffs had “failed to show that such disparities will have materially adverse effects on the ability of minority voters to cast a ballot and effectively exercise the electoral franchise.”Įchoing Chief Justice John Roberts’s opinion in Shelby County, Schroeder stated that while the Old North State had a shameful history of racial discrimination, it was just that-history. “As the evidence in the record makes clear, that is what happened here.”Ī range of plaintiffs, including the North Carolina NAACP, the Advancement Project, and the Department of Justice quickly sued the state over the law. “In North Carolina, restriction of voting mechanisms and procedures that most heavily affect African Americans will predictably redound to the benefit of one political party and to the disadvantage of the other,” Motz wrote. These voters also vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Both sides effectively agreed that these changes disproportionately affected poor, elderly, and African American voters, who were less likely to hold the required forms of photo ID, more likely to move frequently, and more likely to take advantage of early voting. ![]() Freed from that requirement, the General Assembly passed a slate of changes, including the photo-ID requirement. That section required states with a history of voter discrimination to “preclear” any changes to voting laws with the U.S. North Carolina’s law, often described as the strictest in the nation, passed shortly after the Supreme Court struck down Section 5 the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. ![]() “In what comes as close to a smoking gun as we are likely to see in modern times, the State’s very justification for a challenged statute hinges explicitly on race-specifically its concern that African Americans, who had overwhelmingly voted for Democrats, had too much access to the franchise,” wrote Judge Diana Gribbon Motz. The three-judge panel in Richmond, Virginia, unanimously concluded that the law was racially discriminatory, and it blocked a requirement that voters show photo identification to vote and restored same-day voter registration, a week of early voting, pre-registration for teenagers, and out-of-precinct voting. DURHAM, N.C.-The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down key portions of North Carolina’s strict 2013 voting law on Friday, delivering a stern rebuke to the state’s Republican General Assembly and Governor Pat McCrory. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |