North Carolina Supreme Court rejects ‘racially discriminatory’ voter ID law and state electoral map

The North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday knocked down a 2018 voter-identification law it said discriminated against Black voters and ordered a state Senate map be redrawn due to Republican partisan gerrymandering.

Both were 4-3 decisions along party lines, with all the court’s Democratic justices voting in the majority and all Republican justices dissenting. The decisions come just before the court flips to GOP control on Jan. 1, when there will be five Republican justices and two Democrats.

The court upheld a lower court’s 2021 ruling that a 2018 law requiring voters to present photo ID was unconstitutional. The majority opinion said that the lower court correctly found that the law “was motivated by a racially discriminatory purpose.”