North Carolina’s photo voter ID law was blocked Friday after judges ruled it was discriminatory.
The law, S.B. 824, was passed in 2018 and required voters to present an ID in order to vote. Two Superior Court judges in Wake County ruled that the law violates the state’s constitution “because it was adopted with a discriminatory purpose”.
North Carolina’s Voter ID law, was enacted with the unconstitutional intent to discriminate against African American voters.
During the ruling, the majority referenced a study done in 2015 by Sen. Van Duyn that reported at least 5.9% of registered voters do not have identification and almost 10% of black voters “lacked acceptable ID”. This was compared to 4.5% of registered white voters under another bill.
The majority also argued the law was discriminatory because “since a greater percentage of Black voters live in poverty, Black voters face greater hurdles to acquiring photo ID”.
The ID needed to vote could be a driver’s license, military ID, or other form of identification. The law passed weeks after citizens voted to have the ID requirement in order to vote.
One judge, Nathaniel Poovey, disagreed with the majority. He said “not one scintilla of evidence was introduced during this trial that any legislator acted with racially discriminatory intent”.
Poovey claimed that the plaintiffs relied on “past history of other lawmakers and used an extremely broad brush to paint the 2018 General Assembly with the same toxic paint”. He added that they “failed to meet their initial burden” to prove the legislature was racially discriminatory.
They wrote “the Republican majority ‘targeted voters who, based on race, were unlikely to vote for the majority party'”.