In the North Carolina voter ID case, decided by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, Judge Diana Gribbon Motz likewise asked whether there was a problem for the new law to solve. North Carolina, like other states, claimed it needed the law to prevent fraud at the polls. But “the state has failed to identify even a single individual who has ever been charged with committing in-person voter fraud in North Carolina,” Judge Motz said.

By contrast, she continued, “the General Assembly did have evidence of alleged cases of mail-in absentee voter fraud.” But despite knowing that citizens who lacked the required identification were disproportionately black, while those who voted by absentee ballot were disproportionately white, the legislators rejected amendments that would have extended identification requirements to absentee voting. “We do not ask whether the state has an interest in preventing voter fraud — it does — or whether a photo ID requirement constitutes one way to serve that interest — it may,” Judge Motz wrote. Rather, she said, the question was whether the Legislature would have enacted the law “if it had no disproportionate impact on African-American voters.” She concluded: “The record evidence establishes that it would not have.”

Throughout her opinion, North Carolina State Conference of the N.A.A.C.P. v. McCrory, Judge Motz documented how the Legislature, armed with data it had requested showing the racial breakdown of voters who used various practices, specifically singled out for limitations or elimination those practices most used by African-American voters. These included early voting and same-day registration. Judge Motz then observed somewhat delicately that “the party that newly dominated the legislature” was also “the party that rarely enjoyed African-American support” — facts that provided the answer to what she called “the puzzle of the General Assembly’s motivation.” The answer to the puzzle: The Republican politicians’ motive was to entrench their party in office in the face of surging voter registration and participation by North Carolina’s black citizens.

“Using race as a proxy for party may be an effective way to win an election,” Judge Motz wrote. “But intentionally targeting a particular race’s access to the franchise because its members vote for a particular party, in a predictable manner, constitutes discriminatory purpose.”

Judge Motz’s language was more pointed and conclusory than Justice Breyer’s. Justice Breyer stopped short of declaring that the Texas Legislature’s stated motivation was phony and that its real motive was to restrict access to abortion to whatever degree the courts would let it get away with. But the message was clear, and the two decisions’ overlap in analysis is striking. Absence of a documented problem? Check. Singling out a particular practice for onerous requirements? Check. The legislators’ knowledge of the likely impact? Check. An official justification that the evidence, examined in close detail, can’t support? Check.

Of the decisions in the Texas abortion case and voter ID cases in Texas and North Carolina, the Texas voter decision is the most conventionally cautious. But coming from one of the country’s most conservative appeals courts, the Fifth Circuit, it is the most surprising. (It was a Fifth Circuit decision that the Supreme Court overturned in the abortion case.) The 9 to 6 opinion, issued by the full appeals court, was both the product of obvious compromise among the nine judges in the majority (four appointed by Republican presidents and five by Democrats) and of a pressing deadline. In an unusual order on April 29, the Supreme Court had given the Fifth Circuit until July 20 to decide the case, after which, the justices suggested, they themselves might intervene. (Two years ago, the Fifth Circuit had issued a stay of the District Court’s decision that invalidated the voter ID law, and the Supreme Court had refused to lift that stay, thus keeping the law in place.) The decision, Veasey v. Abbott, was issued on deadline, on July 20.