ICYMI: Supreme Court Strikes Down Racially Drawn NC Voter Maps

CHARLOTTE, NC — The U.S. Supreme Court struck down two congressional districts in North Carolina Monday morning, saying that the issue of race went too far in their design.

The district maps for the 1st and 12th Congressional districts, created in 2011 by the state GOP to maximize its advantage, weakened the African-American vote in other districts by creating higher-than-average ratios of African-American voters in the two districts, the justices said May 22. Justice Elena Kagan wrote the decision, saying the 1st district “produced boundaries amplifying divisions between blacks and whites,” and that in the case of the 12th district, “race, not politics, accounted for the district’s reconfiguration,” USA Today reported.

The move comes one week after the court refused to hear an appeal case to reinstate North Carolina’s voting ID laws a federal court had already ruled against them by saying they targeted African-American voters with “surgical precision.”

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The U.S. Supreme Court will not be hearing an appeal aimed at restoring North Carolina’s voter identification laws, it announced May 15, leaving in place a federal court ruling that said it was unconstitutional.

In July 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit struck down North Carolina’s voting identification law that was signed into law in 2013, saying the provisions were enacted with “discriminatory intent” and targeted African-American voters with “almost surgical precision.”

The law required voters to show photo identification while casting ballots. As explained by Reuters, "critics argued that the law enacted by North Carolina and several other states are designed to drive down turnout by minorities and poor people who rely more on flexible voting methods and are less likely to possess state-issued photo IDs."

The Fourth Circuit Court ruling struck down the law's voter ID requirements, the reduction of early voting from 17 days to 10 days, the elimination of same-day registration and preregistration before voters turned 18 and a ban on votes cast in the wrong precinct, according to The New York Times.

While the Supreme Court gave no reason on May 15 for its decision to not hear the case, Chief Justice John G. Roberts said in a statement that there was a dispute about who represented North Carolina in the case and that “nothing should be read into the court’s decision to decline to hear it,” The New York Times reported May 15.

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