POLITICO
Justice Department to challenge North Carolina voter ID law
The
Justice Department will file suit against North Carolina on Monday,
charging that the Tar Heel State’s new law requiring voters to show
photo identification at the polls violates the Voting Rights Act by
discriminating against African Americans, according to a person familiar
with the planned litigation.
Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce the lawsuit at 11 a.m. Monday at Justice Department headquarters, flanked by the three U.S. Attorneys from North Carolina.
The justices’ 5-4 ruling outraged civil rights advocates, but did not disturb a rarely-used “bail in” provision in the law that allows judges to put states or localities under the preclearance requirement. Civil rights groups and the Justice Department have since seized on that provision to try to recreate part of the regime that existed prior to the Supreme Court decision.
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed the voter ID measure into law last last month.
Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce the lawsuit at 11 a.m. Monday at Justice Department headquarters, flanked by the three U.S. Attorneys from North Carolina.
The
suit, set to be filed in Greensboro, N.C., will ask that the state be
barred from enforcing the new voter ID law, the source said. However,
the case will also go further, demanding that the entire state of North
Carolina be placed under a requirement to have all changes to voting
laws, procedures and polling places “precleared” by either the Justice
Department or a federal court, the source added.
Until this year,
40 North Carolina counties were under such a requirement. However, in
June, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the formula Congress
used to subject parts or all of 15 states to preclearance in recent
decades.The justices’ 5-4 ruling outraged civil rights advocates, but did not disturb a rarely-used “bail in” provision in the law that allows judges to put states or localities under the preclearance requirement. Civil rights groups and the Justice Department have since seized on that provision to try to recreate part of the regime that existed prior to the Supreme Court decision.
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed the voter ID measure into law last last month.
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MSNBC
The battle for voting rights is just the beginning, says Holder
6:45 PM on 09/20/2013
US Attorney General Eric Holder arrives to address the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference during a public policy forum on voting rights in Washington on September 20, 2013. (Photo by Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty)
This story has been updated and a correction appended.
Attorney General Eric Holder said Friday that the Justice Department will continue its efforts to protect voting rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision which gutted the Voting Rights Act earlier this summer.
During remarks to the Congressional Black Caucus, Holder explained that the lawsuits filed to stop Texas’s discriminatory redistricting and voter ID laws are “just the beginning.”
“Thanks to the hard work of our Civil Rights Division, we are continuing to refine and re-focus current enforcement efforts across the country,” he said. “And while the suits we’ve filed in Texas mark the first voting rights enforcement actions the Justice Department has taken since the Supreme Court ruling, they will not be the last.”
So far, the Justice Department has filed lawsuits to block redistricting and voter ID laws in Texas, along with pushing to see the state returned to preclearance under a different provision of the Voting Rights Act that remains intact after the Supreme Court ruling.
Earlier this week, the NAACP and Mexican American Legislative Caucus filed a lawsuit joining the DOJ in its attempt to block the voter ID law.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott called the Justice Department’s efforts a “scheme” to win Texas for Democrats.
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Southern States Are Moving to Tighten Voting Rules
Emboldened by the Supreme Court decision that struck down the heart of
the Voting Rights Act, a growing number of Republican-led states are
moving aggressively to tighten voting rules. Lawsuits by the Obama
administration and voting rights activists say those efforts
disproportionately affect minorities.
At least five Southern states, no longer required to ask Washington's
permission before changing election procedures, are adopting strict
voter identification laws or toughening existing requirements.
Texas officials are battling the U.S. Justice Department to put in place
a voter ID law that a federal court has ruled was discriminatory. In
North Carolina, the GOP-controlled Legislature scaled back early voting
and ended a pre-registration program for high school students nearing
voting age.
Nowhere is the debate more heated than in Florida, where the chaotic recount in the disputed 2000 presidential race took place.
Florida election officials are set to resume an effort to remove
noncitizens from the state's voting rolls. A purge last year ended in
embarrassment after hundreds of American citizens, most of whom were
black or Hispanic, were asked to prove their citizenship or risk losing
their right to vote.
Republican leaders across the South say the new measures are needed to
prevent voter fraud, even though such crimes are rare. Democrats and
civil rights groups say the changes are political attacks aimed at
minorities and students — voting groups that tend to lean toward
Democrats — in states with legacies of poll taxes and literacy tests.
In North Carolina, for example, a state board of elections survey found
that more than 600,000 registered voters did not have a state-issued ID,
a requirement to vote under the state's new law. Many of those voters
are young, black, poor or elderly.
"We're in the middle of the biggest wave of voter suppression since the
Voting Rights Act was enacted," said Katherine Culliton-González,
director of voter protection for the Advancement Project, a
Washington-based civil rights group that has undertaken legal challenges
in several states.
For five decades, states and localities with a history of discrimination
had to submit all election laws, from new congressional district maps
to precinct locations and voting hours, to federal lawyers for approval.
That practice ended in June when the Supreme Court struck down the
provision in the Voting Rights Act as outdated.
Voting rights groups said recent actions by Southern states highlight
the need for Congress to retool the rejected sections of the landmark
1965 law that were credited with ensuring ballot access to millions of
blacks, American Indians and other minorities.
The administration is using the remaining parts of the law to bring court cases.
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