In his decision, Peterson introduced the story of an elderly black woman, Mrs. Smith, who “was born in the South, barely 50 years after slavery” and simply could not navigate the intricate process of procuring a voter ID. Wisconsin’s ID Petition Process could not link the records of her life to a birth record, so she remained ineligible to vote under its new law that required strict voter ID. That story could be emblematic of any number of older voters of color in states with new restrictive voting laws. Indeed, it is a story akin to that of Rosanell Eaton, a black woman born in 1921 who would have had to “incur significant time and expense” in order to obtain the proper ID to be able to vote in North Carolina—even though she’d been registered to vote since the Jim Crow era. And it is a story similar to that of Alberta Currie, who first voted in 1956. Both of these women became plaintiffs in the legal challenge to North Carolina’s new voter law. All of their experiences are representative examples of a continuous onslaught of electoral racism that has existed since the 14th and 15th Amendments gave newly free black people the nominal right to vote.

Of course, legislators in North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin were smart enough to avoid direct tells of the racism woven into their voter-suppression laws. North Carolina’s H.B. 589—passed in 2013 directly after Shelby County v. Holder removed pre-clearance regulations for state and local voting laws—is perhaps the most restrictive: It requires strict voter ID, cuts early voting, eliminates same-day registration, eliminates straight-ticket and out-of precinct voting, enables more observers and direct-vote challenges, and increases local and state campaign contribution limits. Wisconsin’s law was similar and established strict voter-ID requirements, established an ineffectual ID-provision program, severely curtailed early voting, and decreased a residency requirement for voting. Texas’s law was limited to establishing voter-ID requirements. In none of those states or any of the other states that have changed their voting regulations after Shelby County has the official rationale been linked to race or even to diminishing the number of voters.

But the official reasons of protecting against voter fraud and good-governance simply don’t hold up given the history, timing, and legislative processes involved in each bill. North Carolina’s law was perhaps the most blatantly racist, and it was blasted as such by the court. The fact that it was passed immediately after Shelby County effectively ended federal oversight of potentially discriminatory election laws was a brazen, winking challenge to common sense. But court documents show that the timing was the least brazen bit of North Carolina’s maneuvering. Legislators requested data on racial voting patterns—including extensive data on early voting—just before creating reforms that displayed “surgical precision” in their ability to restrict early voting and establish voter ID. The result was not just the kind of racially disparate impact that often accompanies many winking-and-knowing statute-skirting policies, but a racism that was undeniable in both outcome and intent.