The Justice Department filed 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. 
 
 Attorney General Eric Holder announced the lawsuit at Justice Department headquarters, flanked by the three U.S. attorneys from North Carolina. 
 
 Text Size - 
 
 + 
 
 reset 
 
 “Allowing limits on voting rights that disproportionately exclude minority voters would be inconsistent with our ideals as a nation,” Holder said. “And it would not be in keeping with the proud tradition of democracy that North Carolinians have built in recent years.” 
 
 (QUIZ: How well do you know Eric Holder?) 
 
 Holder charged that North Carolina’s legislation wouldn’t just incidentally hurt African American turnout, but was intentionally designed that way. 
 
 “The Justice Department expects to show that the clear and intended effects of these changes would contract the electorate and result in unequal access to participation in the political process on account of race,” the attorney general said. 
 
 The suit, filed in Greensboro, N.C., asks that the state be barred from enforcing the new voter-ID law. However, the case goes 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 all or part of 15 states to preclearance in recent decades. 
 
 (PHOTOS: Eric Holder’s career) 
 
 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, a Republican, signed the voter ID measure into law last last month. 
 
 “Common practices like boarding an airplane and purchasing Sudafed require photo ID, and we should expect nothing less for the protection of our right to vote,” McCrory said at the time. “This new law brings our state in line with a healthy majority of other states throughout the country. This common-sense safeguard is commonplace.” 
 
 A law mandating a photo ID for voting was not on the books in North Carolina during the 2012 presidential election. Such a measure passed in 2011 but was vetoed by then-Gov. Bev Perdue, a Democrat. The Legislature failed to override her veto. 
 
 (PHOTOS: 7 controversial voter ID quotes) 
 
 DOJ’s lawsuit objects to the law’s photo ID requirement as well as three other key provisions: the elimination of the first seven days of early voting that took place in 2012, the end to same-day voter registration during the early voting period, and the end to the option of provisional ballots for voters who show up at the wrong polling place. 
 
 The chief of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, Jocelyn Samuels, said the lawsuit argues that the law has the “purpose, intent and effect of discriminating on the basis of race.” 
 
 A North Carolina Board of Elections study in April of this year found that more than 300,000 registered voters in the state did not have a Department of Motor Vehicles-issued ID. African-Americans accounted for 34 percent of those who did not match with the DMV records, although they account for only about 22 percent of registered voters in the state. 
 
 Proponents of voter ID laws have argued that they prevent voter fraud, but Holder said Monday that there’s no evidence such a phenomenon is widespread. 
 
 “The proof of that is simply not there,” Holder said. “All the studies I have seen, that are reputable, indicate this concern about vote fraud is something that is made up.” 
 
 Holder also said some of the provisions in the North Carolina law didn’t seem to have any logical connection to fraud. “It’s hard to see how…cutting back on early voting hours has anything to do with vote fraud,” he said. 
 
 DOJ moved in July to put Texas, which had been subject to preclearance statewide until the June Supreme Court ruling, back under preclearance requirements. That move came first in a pending lawsuit over redistricting in the state and later in another case over that state’s voter ID law. 
 
 In the Texas cases, the Justice Department is asking that the state be put under preclearance for ten years. However, in the North Carolina case, federal government lawyers are not seeking a specific duration for the new preclearance requirement. 
 
 Judges have yet to act on those requests. However, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, complained that the Justice Department’s demand disrespected the Supreme Court decision. 
 
 “This end run around the Supreme Court undermines the will of the people of Texas, and casts unfair aspersions on our state’s common-sense efforts to preserve the integrity of our elections process,” Perry said in a statement. 
 
 In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that an Indiana voter ID law was constitutional. However, the justices did not deal with the question of whether that law or a similar law in another state might violate the Voting Rights Act. Civil rights advocates have insisted that the Voting Rights Act puts a greater burden on states seeking to restrict voting when doing so disproportionately affects minority groups. ||||| 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.
– North Carolina passed a controversial voter ID law in July, but if the Department of Justice has its way, the law—said to be the most sweeping of its kind in the nation—may never be enforced. The DOJ will file suit against the state today, a source tells Politico and the Charlotte Observer; Eric Holder is expected to make the announcement later today. The suit accuses North Carolina of violating the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against black voters, and asks that the state be barred from enforcing the law—which was scheduled to go into effect for the 2016 elections. It also seeks to put North Carolina back on a "preclearance" list, meaning all changes to voting laws and procedures would need to first be approved by the DOJ or a federal court. Forty North Carolina counties were subject to preclearance until June, when the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act. But the DOJ can use another VRA provision to attempt to put states back under preclearance, as it is also doing in Texas. The problem with the voter ID law, as the DOJ sees it: Just 22% of registered voters in North Carolina are African American, but they make up 34% of the voters who do not have a DMV-issued ID (and thus would not be allowed to vote). The DOJ suit will also take issue with three other parts of the law: the elimination of provisional ballots for voters who go to the incorrect polling place (30% of out-of-precinct voters last year were African American); the elimination of some early voting days (29% of early voters last year were African American); and the elimination of same-day voter registration during early voting (41% of voters using same-day registration were African American).