Louisiana has repealed a century-old state law that required naturalized citizens to provide proof of their citizenship when they registered to vote, a change that effectively resolves a lawsuit’s discrimination claims. Civil rights groups that sued last month to block the 142-year-old law’s enforcement announced Wednesday that they will withdraw their federal lawsuit now that state lawmakers have removed it from the books. Their suit claimed the old law discriminated against foreign-born, naturalized U.S. citizens by arbitrarily subjecting them to “heightened” voter registration requirements that didn’t apply to native-born citizens.
The lawsuit was filed on May 4 by attorneys for the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Fair Elections Legal Network. In their suit, they said Louisiana’s law appeared to be the last of its kind still enforced in the U.S. Similar laws in other states used to be more common but were struck down, the suit added.
The law’s repeal was tucked into a broader elections bill that Gov. John Bel Edwards signed last Friday. A Senate committee proposed the amendment.
Secretary of State Tom Schedler, a defendant in the groups’ lawsuit, said in statement Wednesday that his office supported the law’s repeal. “Saving taxpayers’ money by avoiding a needless lawsuit was common sense,” he said. “My office has already begun the process of communicating with our registrars of voters statewide to make sure they are informed immediately of the change in the law.”
Full Article: Louisiana Repeals Century-Old Voter Registration Requirement – ABC News.