North Carolina Judges Block Voter ID Law

A panel of North Carolina judges in a split decision Friday blocked the state’s voter ID law, saying it discriminates against Black people.

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The ruling cited a 2015 analysis by a political scientist which showed that hundreds of thousands of registered voters in North Carolina potentially lacked ID that would qualify them to cast ballots under the law.

That analysis found that 9.6% of Black “registered voters lacked acceptable ID” for voting under a prior voter ID bill, “as compared with 4.5% of white registered voters.”

The majority decision noted that because Black people in North Carolina are more much likely to live in poverty than white people, they thus are also more likely to “face greater hurdles to acquiring photo ID” as a result of not having a car or being able to get time off from work to do so.

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Judges Michael O’Foghludha and Vince Rozier Jr. wrote the majority decision Friday, which came after a trial earlier this year.

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Judge Nathaniel Poovey dissented from the decision, writing that “not one scintilla of evidence was introduced during this trial that any legislator acted with racially discriminatory intent.”

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