The U.S. Department of Justice will file a lawsuit Monday to stop North Carolinas new voter ID law, which critics have said is the most sweeping law of its kind, according to a person briefed on the departments plans. 
 
 Attorney General Eric Holder, who has said he will fight state voting laws that he sees as discriminatory, will announce the lawsuit at noon Monday, along with the three U.S. attorneys from the state. 
 
 Critics said the law will disenfranchise African-American and elderly voters, while the Republican-led General Assembly in Raleigh said the law will protect the states voters from potential fraud. 
 
 In June, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key section of the Voting Rights Act, which required a handful of mostly Southern states to get approval from the Justice Department before making changes to their voting laws. The entire state of North Carolina wasnt covered under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, though several counties were covered by the landmark law and had been subjected to additional federal scrutiny. 
 
 Since that case, the Obama administration filed suit in August to stop a new voter ID law in Texas. North Carolina is the second state it has sued since the so-called preclearance list of Southern states was overturned by the Supreme Court. 
 
 The North Carolina ID law, which was signed by Gov. Pat McCrory in August, goes into effect for the 2016 elections. It requires voters to show a valid, government-issued ID before casting a ballot. It also has a number of other provisions, which will be challenged in the federal lawsuit, according to the person briefed on the Justice Departments plans. 
 
 Among them: the elimination of seven days of early voting; the elimination of same-day registration during early voting; the prohibition against counting provisional ballots that are cast when a voter shows up at the wrong polling place. 
 
 But requiring voters to show a government-issued ID is believed to be the heart of the lawsuit. Student IDs are not allowed. 
 
 Bob Hall, head of Democracy North Carolina, an election advocacy group, said it was important for the federal government to get involved. Hall said African-Americans are 23 percent of registered voters in North Carolina but made up 29 percent of early voters in 2012, 30 percent of those who cast out-of-precinct ballots, 34 percent of the 318,000 registered voters without state-issued IDs, and 41 percent of those who used same-day registration. 
 
 It's important to recognize that eliminating or restricting those particular features hurt certain people, Hall said. 
 
 State Sen. Bob Rucho, a Mecklenburg County Republican who has supported the elections law changes, said Sunday night that he had not seen the complaint and could not comment. Let's see what the complaint is first, Rucho said. 
 
 The Rev. William Barber II, head of the state NAACP, which has filed lawsuits in federal court and the North Carolina courts, challenging the law, said Sunday that he was glad to have assistance from the federal government. We need every resource, including the federal Department of Justice, to stand against the fundamental attack on democracy, Barber said. This law went beyond the pale and all North Carolinians should be repulsed by this effort to turn the clock back on voting rights in this state. 
 
 The federal government will charge that the state was willfully discriminatory when it passed the law. Part of that charge is a 2013 analysis by the N.C. Board of Elections, which said that more than 300,000 registered voters did not have a DMV-issued ID. 
 
 In addition to asking that the Voter ID law be struck down, the Justice Department is seeking to have North Carolina put back on the preclearance list that requires the federal government to approve changes to voter laws. 
 
 In the Supreme Court case that struck down the preclearance list, Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court said that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act wasnt unconstitional. Section 5 requires some states and counties to get preapproval for changes to their voting laws. 
 
 But the 5-4 decision in Shelby County v. Holder found that the preclearance list itself  which is nearly 40 years old  was outdated and unconstitutional. 
 
 Congress could pass a new list of states that need pre-clearance, though that is seen as unlikely in todays divided government. 
 
 Pennsylvania passed a voter ID law before the 2012 presidential election. A state judge delayed the implementation of that law after civil rights groups sued to stop it. Pennsylvania was not subject to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. 
 
 Cleve Wootson contributed. ||||| Federal appellate judges on Friday struck down a 2013 law limiting voting options and requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls, declaring in an unsparing opinion that the restrictions “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.” 
 
 The three-judge panel of the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the law was adopted with “discriminatory intent” despite lawmakers’ claims that the ID provision and other changes were designed to prevent voter fraud. 
 
 The ruling — which could have implications for voting laws in other states and possibly for the outcome of close races in the swing state of North Carolina — sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder, who in April issued a 485-page decision dismissing all claims in the legal challenge. 
 
 “In holding that the legislature did not enact the challenged provisions with discriminatory intent, the court seems to have missed the forest in carefully surveying the many trees,” the ruling states. “This failure of perspective led the court to ignore critical facts bearing on legislative intent, including the inextricable link between race and politics in North Carolina.” 
 
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 The ruling prohibits North Carolina from requiring photo identification from voters in future elections, including the November 2016 general election. It restores a week of early voting and preregistration for 16- and 17-year-olds, and ensures that same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting will remain in effect. 
 
 State Board of Elections officials immediately began to pull back advertising campaigns that had been designed to air on TV, radio and other media in the coming months to educate North Carolina voters about what they would need to cast ballots in the coming election. 
 
 Challengers of the elections law overhaul shepherded through the Republican-led General Assembly in 2013 and signed into law by Gov. Pat McCrory quickly lauded the ruling. Republican leaders criticized the ruling, noting that IDs are required to board airplanes, enter federal courthouses, cash checks and more. They announced their plans to appeal. 
 
 U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who leads the U.S. Justice Department that was a party in the lawsuit challenging the law, praised the appellate panel for striking down a law “that the court described in its ruling as ‘one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history.’ ” Lynch described the law as one that placed “barriers between citizens and the ballot box.” 
 
 “And it sent a message that contradicted some of the most basic principles of our democracy,” Lynch said in her statement. “The ability of Americans to have a voice in the direction of their country – to have a fair and free opportunity to help write the story of this nation – is fundamental to who we are and who we aspire to be. Going forward, the Department of Justice will continue our work to protect that sacred right for all.” 
 
 Read the court opinion 
 
 Lynch and many others echoed phrases from several lines in the 83-page ruling that bats back contentions by advocates of the law who claimed IDs were needed at the polls to prevent voter fraud. 
 
 “Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist,” the 4th Circuit judges wrote. 
 
 “This ruling is a stinging rebuke of the state’s attempt to undermine African-American voter participation, which had surged over the last decade,” said Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. “It is a major victory for North Carolina voters and for voting rights.” 
 
 N.C. Senate leader Phil Berger, a Republican from Rockingham County, and state House Speaker Tim Moore, a Republican from Cleveland County, issued a joint statement questioning the motives of the three-judge panel — Judge Diana Motz, a Bill Clinton appointee, Judge James A. Wynn Jr., a Barack Obama appointee, and Judge Henry F. Floyd, an Obama appointee to the 4th circuit bench but a George W. Bush appointee to the U.S. District bench. 
 
 “Since today’s decision by three partisan Democrats ignores legal precedent, ignores the fact that other federal courts have used North Carolina’s law as a model, and ignores the fact that a majority of other states have similar protections in place, we can only wonder if the intent is to reopen the door for voter fraud, potentially allowing fellow Democrat politicians like Hillary Clinton and Roy Cooper to steal the election. We will obviously be appealing this politically-motivated decision to the Supreme Court,” Berger and Moore said. 
 
 “The voter ID law ensures any North Carolina citizen who wants to vote will have that opportunity,” Berger and Moore contended. They pointed to provisions in state law that allow someone without ID to obtain a Division of Motor Vehicles card at no cost as well as offering people who have been unable to obtain one of the six acceptable forms of ID to cast a provisional ballot. 
 
 McCrory, in his statement, accused “three Democratic judges” of “undermining the integrity of our elections while also maligning our state.” 
 
 Other voter ID rulings 
 
 North Carolina’s law is the third with an ID provision courts have rejected in the past two weeks. 
 
 A federal district judge found Wisconsin’s ID law too restrictive. The full 5th U.S. Circuit appeals court found that Texas’s voter ID law violated the Voting Rights Act by making it more difficult for minorities to vote and opened the door for putting the state under federal supervision again. 
 
 “We applaud the appeals court for recognizing the discriminatory intent behind the monster voter suppression law,” Bob Hall, director of Democracy NC, a voting rights organization, said in a statement about the N.C. case. “The ruling makes clear that the North Carolina General Assembly cherry-picked the law to suppress African American and young voters because of the 2008 election. Today’s ruling begins to right that wrong.” 
 
 In North Carolina, the state could ask the full bench of the 4th Circuit to review the ruling. But attorneys and others speculate that even if the full court agreed to review the case, the 2013 election-law changes would not be restored before the November elections. 
 
 “Because of this ruling, North Carolinians will now be able to register and vote free of the obstacles created by the Legislature in 2013,” said Southern Coalition for Social Justice senior attorney Allison Riggs. 
 
 Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, questioned whether the law had been defended well. Though N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper’s office represented lawmakers in the case, Republican leaders also hired private attorneys. 
 
 “This is an effort to overthrow the will of the people on voter ID and ballot security, and it is led by the Democrats and, we believe, by Roy Cooper, who did a really lackluster job of defending voter ID while at the same time publicly criticizing it,” Woodhouse said Friday afternoon. 
 
 But Cooper’s campaign noted that Cooper, the Democrat running for governor, had advised McCrory in 2013 to veto the bill. 
 
 North Carolinians were not the only ones commenting on the decision Friday. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate for president, tweeted her support for the ruling. 
 
 Big victory for democracy as the 4th Circuit just struck down a NC voter discrimination law. Let’s keep fighting to make voting easier. -H — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) July 29, 2016 
 
 The Rev. William J. Barber II, fresh off of addressing the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, admonished lawmakers for changing North Carolina’s election laws that had made the state a “model for the nation in encouraging people to vote.” 
 
 Barber is president of the state NAACP that participated in the legal challenge, and the architect of the Moral Monday movement that has protested the voter ID law and other legislation from the Republican-controlled legislature and governor’s office. 
 
 “Today the 4th Circuit’s decision gives North Carolinians back an electoral system that allows the people of North Carolina to vote freely this fall,” Barber said in a statement. 
 
 In 2015, on the eve of the federal trial over the 2013 law, the legislature softened the ID requirement by adding a provison that allowed voters without acceptable ID to cast a provisional ballot if they could show a “reasonable impediment” to obtaining an ID. 
 
 Though Motz differed from Wynn and Floyd on whether the time was right to weigh the “reasonable impediment” option, Wynn wrote for the majority: “Nothing in this record shows that the reasonable impediment exception ensures that the photo ID law no longer imposes any lingering burden on African American voters.” 
 
 That could be significant for Texas and Wisconsin, where such a softening of the ID requirement was suggested, too, lawyers said. 
 
 “This is a very big win for voting rights plaintiffs and the DOJ,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California-Irvine who writes about law and politics on his electionlawblog.org.
– North Carolina's voter ID law isn't just wrong, it's unconstitutional: That novel argument will be heard this week at a hearing where students are joining the NAACP, ACLU, the Justice Department, and voter-registration advocates in a challenge against law HB 589, the New York Times reports. The students' legal reps will argue that North Carolina's law contradicts the 26th Amendment, which states that a voter's rights "shall not be denied or abridged ... on account of age." The amendment also made 18-year-olds eligible to vote. North Carolina's law invalidated student ID cards at the polls and eliminated same-day registration, among other things. Critics say the state's GOP-controlled general assembly passed HB 589 to disenfranchise voters likely to support Democrats, like students and minority members. But supporters say it's a fraud-prevention effort that's even more fair because it's being rolled out gradually; they also say minority turnout didn't decline in last year's primaries. "There was no voter suppression," a GOP state senator told WRAL. "Actually we had some good turnouts for a primary election." The law followed swiftly after the Supreme Court nixed a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act last year, the Guardian notes. That provision had forced nine states, North Carolina included, to get federal approval before altering voting rules.