US court hears closing arguments in case that could affect 2016 election, with challengers saying requirements discriminate against black and Latino voters

The North Carolina legislature “intentionally passed a law that would discriminate against African Americans and Latinos”, an attorney told a federal judge on Monday in a case that could have broad implications for the 2016 election.

The federal court in Winston Salem heard closing arguments in a trial over the state’s newly implemented voter identification law.

The rule, which went into effect on 1 January, requires citizens to show state-issued photo ID before casting a ballot.



The challenge to the law, led by the state chapters of the NAACP and League of Women Voters as well as the US Department of Justice, argued that the requirements were racially discriminatory to black and Latino citizens who are less likely to have photo ID or the means to acquire it. North Carolina is just one of 15 states where restrictive new voting laws will go into effect for the 2016 election and are forecast to disproportionately disenfranchise black and Latino Americans.

The proceedings were the latest in the convoluted legal battle that has been unfolding in North Carolina since the state’s Republican-controlled legislature passed HB 589 in July 2013. As well as mandating voter ID, the law significantly shortened the window for early voting, prevented citizens from voting outside their district, ended the preregistration of 17-year-olds, and stopped same-day registration, where voters register on the same day they cast a ballot.

“We believe that the legislature intentionally passed a law that would discriminate against African Americans and Latinos, and potentially one of the reasons is the rising electorate and more participation by people of color,” said Donita Judge, a senior attorney for the Advancement Project, the non-profit advocacy organization that is representing the NAACP in the suit.

North Carolina is one of the states to pass tough voter registration rules in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby v Holder. The ruling invalidated the section of the 1965 voting rights act that required certain states and counties with a history of racial discrimination to get federal preclearance before making changes to their election laws. Judge said under the old preclearance rules HB589 would “not have passed muster”, which explains its timing, passed less a month after the Shelby decision.

“Of the 11 states with the highest African American turnout in 2008, seven of them have new laws in place,” said Jonathan Brater, who serves as counsel for the Brennan Center, a nonpartisan voting right organization.

In July 2015, federal judge Thomas Schroeder, who also presided over this week’s testimony, heard arguments in a separate trial on all the bill’s provisions, save for the voter ID requirement. That was because just two days before the arguments began, the legislature passed a “reasonable impediment” exemption that allowed for voters without ID to cast a provisional ballot if they lacked ID for an acceptable reason like “lack of proper documents, family obligations, or transportation problems”.

Since the modification had been made so close to that trial, consideration of the voter ID provision was held until last Monday, when opening arguments of this trial took place.

The Rev William Barber II, a spokesperson for the state NAACP, said the exemption didn’t do nearly enough to preserve the rights of voters, citing the case of Rosanell Eaton, a 95-year-old black North Carolina woman who was registered to vote in 1939 in the Jim Crow south.

Eaton, who was a witness in the case for the NAACP, did not have sufficient ID to vote when the law passed and needed 21 days and 10 visits to the DMV to get into compliance. Barber said that if she wasn’t able to make those trips, “she – who has registered 5,000 voters in her life and stared down the [Ku Klux] Klan – would have voted a regular ballot for 60 years, and suddenly in her 60th year she would have been forced to vote a provisional ballot that may or may not even count.”

Schroeder, an appointee of George W Bush, is no stranger to hearing challenges to the voting law. In August 2014 he denied a preliminary injunction against the act – a ruling with which the US fourth circuit court later disagreed – but the next step in the long-term fate of the law comes when Schroeder makes his ruling, which may not be until March. Among Schroeder’s findings in that initial 125-page ruling was that the elimination of same day registration “supports a finding of discriminatory intent, but only moderately so”.

In 2008, Barack Obama became the first Democrat to win North Carolina in 36 years, largely on the strength of the same coalition of young, black and Latino votes that propelled him to an overwhelming 365-173 electoral victory over Republican John McCain. Down-ballot Democrats also rode the Obama momentum into office, with Senate candidate Kay Hagan and gubernatorial candidate Bev Perdue both easily winning their bids.

And while Obama’s narrow 14,000-vote victory served to signal a possible electoral transformation in the traditionally conservative state, it also illuminated for conservatives how a Democratic takeover could be vulnerable to a stiffening in voting protocol. Obama actually lost by a count of the votes cast on election day, but won when early voting totals were also counted. Early voting is disproportionately relied upon by black voters.

Then, in 2012, North Carolina voters selected Mitt Romney for president, elected a Republican governor and the state legislature landed firmly in Republican control. It was the first time that both houses of the legislature and the governor’s mansion were placed under the control of the Republican party since Reconstruction.

The new GOP majority wasted little time pushing a conservative legislative agenda including sweeping cuts to Medicaid, unemployment, education and other social programs, along with the voter ID bill. In response, The “Moral Monday” movement, spearheaded by the state NAACP, began weekly protests in the state legislative building for which more than 1,000 would be arrested.

Barber, who was one of the principal organizers and leaders of Moral Mondays, noting the date of closing arguments, said: “It’s poetically ironic that today, at the beginning of black history month, we will hear closing arguments – which reminds us that the fight for justice is never over and that just as our ancestors in past have fought, we must fight.”