NC voter ID law goes to trial. A judge could block it, but that may not be the last word

North Carolina’s new voter ID requirement goes to court this week, as challengers to a long-running lawsuit argue that it discriminates against black and Latino voters.

U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs, who has temporarily blocked the law before, will preside over the trial starting Monday in Winston-Salem.

The case has the potential to block the state’s voter ID requirement before the 2024 election — although an appeal is likely no matter how Biggs rules.

The North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP first sued the state over its voter ID requirement in 2018, setting off a case that has now raged for more than five years, ricocheting between appeals courts and clashing with a similar case at the state level.

In its trial summary, the NAACP argues that the voter ID requirement “was enacted with discriminatory intent” in violation of the U.S. Constitution and “has already had a discriminatory impact on the right of black and Latino citizens in North Carolina to participate in policy”. process.”

Republican state legislative leaders, who served as defendants in the case, point out that the law provides broad exceptions for voters who do not have ID. They also reject allegations that they intended to discriminate.

“Nothing in legislative history suggests that the General Assembly used racial voting data to disproportionately target minority voters,” the defendants wrote in the judgment summary. “…Nor can the plaintiffs identify discriminatory observations in the legislative history for this bill.”

Before the trial, Republican legislative leaders attempted to have several of the NAACP’s new witnesses expelled. On Monday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Patrick Auld partially granted that request. He ordered that several planned witnesses from Democracy North Carolina and Vote Riders could not be used at trial.

The voter registration card has been in force since last April, after a long series of legal proceedings.

The March primary was the first major test of the law in recent years. Of the 1.8 million voters who participated in the elections, almost 1,200 had to launch a provisional vote for identification reasons. Nearly 500 of those provisional ballots were not counted.

In total, more than 99.9% of voters presented a valid photo ID when voting in person.

However, these numbers do not refer to voters who chose not to vote due to the identification requirement.

One of the NAACP’s experts estimates that more than 100,000 voters were deterred from voting due to voter ID requirements in the 2016 primary elections, when the law briefly went into effect.

How did the case get here?

The case began after North Carolina voters approved a constitutional amendment to require voter ID and the Republican-led legislature passed a bill to implement the requirement.

This law not only required voters to present a photo ID to vote, but also allowed voters to challenge other voters for failing to comply with their voter ID and expanded the role of poll watchers.

The NAACP sought an injunction to stop the law from going into effect.

Biggs, appointed by former President Barack Obama, granted the injunction in 2019, writing that the law would likely “have a racially disproportionate impact on North Carolina by preventing some Black voters from voting.”

The case was then delayed by arguments over whether House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger could intervene in the case as defendants. The NAACP lawsuit originally named only Governor Roy Cooper and the State Board of Elections as defendants.

Biggs initially denied the legislative leaders’ request, and the matter reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which allowed them to join the case.

Meanwhile, a separate state-level case also targeted voter identification.

In 2022, the North Carolina Supreme Court, which at the time had a Democratic majority, struck down the state’s voter ID requirementwith Justice Anita Earls writing “although the General Assembly had reason to know that African-American voters would be disproportionately affected (by the law), it still chose to pass a law that required the specific identification documents that African-American voters lack disproportionately. ”

Just a few months later, the partisan makeup of the state Supreme Court changed. In April 2023, the court’s new Republican majority reversed that decision and ruled that voter registration could go into effect.

“This court has traditionally stood against waves of partisan rulings in favor of the fundamental principle of equality before the law. We renew our commitment to this fundamental principle and begin the process to return the judiciary to its rightful place as the ‘least dangerous’ branch,” the court wrote.

A few months after that order, the federal case began again.

The trial begins at 9:30 a.m. Monday in Winston-Salem federal court. A lawyer for the plaintiffs said the trial will take 10 days.