Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals 2016 Ruling on North Carolina Omnibus Voting Law

Background: With a majority in the North Carolina state legislature, in 2013, after Shelby County v. Holder, Republicans enacted a multifaceted new voting law that made it more difficult for African American residents to vote and bolstered Republicans’ advantage in a state in which Democrats held a slight majority. Voting rights advocates appealed the new law. Initially, a federal district court judge upheld the 2013 law, ruling that the plaintiffs had not proved that the state had acted with a racial intent in passing the legislation. However, in 2016 this decision was overturned by the federal court of appeals, which, in contrast to the lower court, found the new laws were passed with a racially discriminatory purpose and also produced a racially discriminatory effect. In the excerpt of its ruling below, the appeals court referred to several previous Supreme Court cases related to voting rights. In the 2006 case, League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry, the Supreme Court determined that a redistricting plan adopted by the state of Texas intentionally violated the Voting Rights Act and deprived the state’s Latinx residents of the ability to elect candidates of their choosing.

In holding that the legislature did not enact the challenged provisions with discriminatory intent, the court seems to have missed the forest in carefully surveying the many trees. This failure of perspective led the court to ignore critical facts bearing on legislative intent, including the inextricable link between race and politics in North Carolina. Voting in many areas of North Carolina is racially polarized. . . . In North Carolina, restriction of voting mechanisms and procedures that most heavily affect African Americans will predictably redound to the benefit of one political party and to the disadvantage of the other. As the evidence in the record makes clear, that is what happened here.

After years of preclearance and expansion of voting access, by 2013 African American registration and turnout rates had finally reached near-parity with white registration and turnout rates. African Americans were poised to act as a major electoral force. But, on the day after the Supreme Court issued Shelby County v. Holder (2013), eliminating preclearance obligations, a leader of the party that newly dominated the legislature (and the party that rarely enjoyed African American support) announced an intention to enact what he characterized as an “omnibus” election law. Before enacting that law, the legislature requested data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices. Upon receipt of the race data, the General Assembly enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans.

In response to claims that intentional racial discrimination animated its action, the State offered only meager justifications. Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist. Thus the asserted justifications cannot and do not conceal the State’s true motivation. “In essence,” as in League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry (2006), “the State took away [minority voters’] opportunity because [they] were about to exercise it.” As in LULAC, “[t]his bears the mark of intentional discrimination.” Faced with this record, we can only conclude that the North Carolina General Assembly enacted the challenged provisions of the law with discriminatory intent. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the district court.

Source: Citation: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Published/161468.P.pdf.