North Carolina judges block voter ID law, saying it discriminates against Black people

Two judges on the panel said in their majority opinion that evidence shows the law, which requires voters to present a photo identification to cast a ballot, “was enacted in part for a discriminatory purpose.”

The decision in Wake County Superior Court also said that the law “would not have been enacted in its current form but for its tendency to discriminate against African American voters.”

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.”