Federal judge upholds NC voter ID law two years after trial

A federal judge has upheld North Carolina’s voter identification law nearly two years after holding a trial in a lawsuit challenging the ID requirement. The same judge had blocked the law from taking effect for the 2020 election cycle.

Her initial ruling against voter ID helped delay implementation of the ID law until 2023.

State lawmakers approved the ID law in 2018 after voters approved a state constitutional amendment enshrining voter ID in North Carolina’s governing document.

“Finally. After seven years, we can put to rest any doubt that our state’s Voter I.D. law is constitutional,” state Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, said in a prepared statement Thursday. “This is a monumental win for the citizens of North Carolina and election integrity efforts.”

“[It is important that this Court begins by recognizing what this case is, and what it is not,” US District Judge Loretta Biggs in her 134-page order Thursday. “This case is not about whether North Carolina law will require that voters show photo identification when they go to the polls. That question was settled on November 6, 2018, when approximately 55% of North Carolina’s registered voters enshrined a photo voter identification requirement in the State Constitution.”

“Thus, there will be photo voter ID in the State of North Carolina,” Biggs added. “In our democratic system of government, we must accept the will of the majority of voters on this issue unless or until the people of North Carolina decide otherwise.”

“Instead, the central issue before this Court is whether Plaintiffs have shown that the North Carolina General Assembly, when designing the constitutional amendment’s implementing legislation, North Carolina Senate Bill 824 (hereinafter ‘S.B. 824’), violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution and § 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” the order continued. “In making this determination, the Court must follow the law of the United States Supreme Court and the Fourth Circuit.”

Biggs held a trial on the voter ID law in May 2024.

“Moreover, it must be recognized that this action was initiated over seven years ago,” she wrote. “Since that time, the law of the United States Supreme Court and Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals related to the issues presented by the instant case have undergone, and continue to undergo, dramatic change. Consequently, this Court, having given careful consideration to the preliminary injunction record, the limited evidence presented at trial, and the arguments of counsel, concludes that it is compelled by controlling case law to render Judgment in favor of the Defendants on both Plaintiffs’ Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment claim and Plaintiffs’ § 2 claim under the Voting Rights Act.”

Biggs wrapped up her two-week trial after hearing from more than two dozen witnesses over nine days in 2024. She conducted a bench trial with no jury.

Opponents labeled the ID law as racially discriminatory. Among those who testified during the trial were left-wing activist the Rev. William Barber and Democratic state Reps. Robert Reives and Marcia Morey. Two former Democratic state senators, Floyd McKissick and Terry Van Duyn, also testified against the ID law.

Republican state legislators approved the ID law in 2018, just weeks after voters agreed to place an ID requirement in the state constitution. Lawyers defending the ID law during the trial pointed out its permissiveness compared to ID requirements in other states. Defenders argued that a law based on racially discriminatory intent would not have allowed voters so many options for casting ballots.

The lawsuit targeted three portions of the 2018 voter ID law. First, the suit challenged the ID requirement itself. Second, critics opposed a provision allowing any voter to challenge another voter for failing to comply with the ID rule. Third, the complaint targeted provisions expanding the use of partisan poll observers.

Republican state legislative leaders have defended voter ID. The State Board of Elections, when it still had a 3-2 Democratic majority, also filed a brief supporting the ID law.

“Any voter ID law will have some impact when it is implemented,” the state board’s lawyers wrote. “However, Plaintiffs cannot show that S.B. 824 has a substantial enough impact to support this claim. That is because the ameliorative provisions found in S.B. 824 allow any voter to cast a ballot, with or without a photo ID, such that the burdens imposed by the law on voters who lack identification are minimal at best.”

Biggs issued an order in March 2024 denying the State Board of Elections’ October 2021 motion for summary judgment in what was then a five-year-old case. The elections board had argued that Biggs should reject the lawsuit without a trial.

State lawmakers joined the case in 2022 after the US Supreme Court confirmed their right to defend the voter ID law.

The federal trial had been scheduled twice before — in January 2021 and January 2022. On both occasions, appeals delayed the case.

A stay issued in December 2021 placed the case in limbo. Plaintiffs challenging the ID law returned to federal court after the state Supreme Court’s April 2023 ruling allowed the ID requirement to move forward.

A 5-2 decision from the Republican-led state high court overturned a December 2022 ruling from the same court. Democrats had held a 4-3 Democratic majority when the court issued its initial ruling. Both decisions involved party-line votes from the justices.

The April 2023 state Supreme Court ruling allowed the current voter ID law to be used for the first time during 2023 municipal elections. Voters have faced the ID requirement in every subsequent election.

Lawmakers approved the 2018 voter ID law weeks after NC voters enshrined an ID requirement in the state constitution. That amendment continues to face its own legal challenge in state courts. A three-judge Superior Court panel upheld the amendment, but critics have appealed to the North Carolina Court of Appeals. The voter ID law can stand or fall legally regardless of the case challenging the state constitutional amendment.

Forward Justice filed the federal suit against the ID law in December 2018 on behalf of the state NAACP and local NAACP chapters.

A year later, on Dec. 31, 2019, Biggs issued a preliminary injunction blocking the voter ID law from taking effect. In a 60-page opinion, Biggs cited North Carolina’s “sordid history of racial discrimination and voter suppression.”

Parts of the law “were impermissibly motivated, at least in part, by discriminatory intent,” wrote Biggs, appointed to the federal bench by former President Barack Obama.

Nearly one year later, a three-judge 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals panel unanimously reversed Biggs’ decision. Appellate judges determined that the trial court had “abused its discretion” when granting the injunction.

The 4th Circuit judges said Biggs was wrong to factor North Carolina’s earlier 2013 voter ID measure into her decision about the 2018 law.

“The district court here considered the General Assembly’s discriminatory intent in passing the 2013 Omnibus Law to be effectively dispositive of its intent in passing the 2018 Voter-ID Law,” wrote Judge Julius Richardson, an appointee of President Donald Trump. “In doing so, it improperly flipped the burden of proof at the first step of its analysis and failed to give effect to the Supreme Court’s presumption of legislative good faith. These errors fatally infected its finding of discriminatory intent. And when that finding crumbles, the preliminary injunction falls with it.”

Judges Marvin Quattlebaum, a Trump appointee, and Pamela Harris, an Obama appointee, joined Richardson’s opinion.

By the time the 4th Circuit struck down Biggs’ injunction, state courts had moved to block the 2018 voter ID law. The state Supreme Court’s April 2023 decision removed the final state court roadblock against voter ID.

The case before Biggs attracted attention from the nation’s highest court.

Republican legislative leaders asked to intervene in the case to defend the voter ID law. Biggs said no in June 2019. The 4th Circuit also ruled against legislative intervention.

Once the US Supreme Court agreed to hear lawmakers’ arguments for intervention, Biggs issued her stay in December 2021. That order blocked a trial that had been scheduled for January 2022. Biggs put the case on hold pending action from the US Supreme Court “or until further Order of this Court.”

In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, by an 8-1 vote, that Republican legislative leaders would be allowed to intervene in the case.

“Federal judge upholds NC voter ID law two years after trial” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.