A federal appeals court asked tough questions Tuesday about North Carolina’s Republican-backed law that imposed tighter rules for voting, including a photo identification requirement at the polls. The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is considering legal challenges from the Justice Department, civil rights groups and citizens who allege the North Carolina law illegally discriminated against minority voters. Allison Riggs, a lawyer for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, argued that North Carolina engaged in an unprecedented rollback of voting rights, which intentionally targeted minorities who tend to vote for Democrats. State lawmakers “knew the disparate impact of every one of these provisions,” she said.
Lawyer Thomas Farr, representing the state, said lawmakers acted reasonably to establish orderly and fair voting rules that were in the mainstream with those from other states. “I strongly deny the General Assembly engaged in intentional discrimination,” he said.
Republican state lawmakers passed the voting restrictions right after a 2013 Supreme Court ruling upended a longstanding part of the Voting Rights Act that required a group of states, mostly in the South, to obtain preliminary approval before altering their electoral practices because of their history of discrimination.
Full Article: North Carolina Faces Tough Questions From Appeals Court on Voting Law – WSJ.