Washington, DC – On news today that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that the North Carolina legislature passed voting restrictions with discriminatory intent and permanently enjoined (that is, totally blocked) those restrictions, including a photo ID requirement, Constitutional Accountability Center Chief Counsel Brianne Gorod released the following reaction:

“When Chief Justice John Roberts and the Supreme Court’s other conservatives eviscerated the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act in the 2013 Shelby County decision, they flashed a green light to conservative elected officials across the country looking for ways to restrict access to the ballot box. The North Carolina legislature saw this signal and enacted a host of voting roadblocks with no obvious purpose other than to keep certain disfavored constituencies – African-Americans foremost among them – from exercising their right to vote as easily as other voters. The Court of Appeals unanimously and correctly flashed a red light to that approach today, finding that the legislature had enacted those provisions with ‘discriminatory intent,’ in violation of the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act. 

“Other like-minded public officials should take notice. Rather than restrict voting access on the basis of race, they should honor the Constitution’s text and history and make it easier to vote, not harder.”

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Resources:

CAC “friend of the court” brief in North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP v. McCrory: http://theusconstitution.org/cases/north-carolina-state-conference-naacp-v-mccrory-4th-cir 

“Voter ID Meets the Voting Rights Act: The Next Big Voting Rights Battle,” David Gans, Balkinization, May 19, 2016: http://balkin.blogspot.com/2016/05/voter-id-meets-voting-rights-act-next.html 

Voting Rights And The Constitution & Cases In The Courts: http://theusconstitution.org/sites/default/files/Voting%20Rights%20Graphic%20(Web).pdf 

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Constitutional Accountability Center (www.theusconstitution.org) is a think tank, public interest law firm, and action center dedicated to fulfilling the progressive promise of the Constitution’s text and history.

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