In some good news coming out of Washington, D.C., the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal to reinstate North Carolina’s restrictive voter identification law, which a lower court ruled targeted African Americans. The Trump administration already has dropped its objections to the Texas law.Shortly before Trump took office in January, the Justice Department urged the Supreme Court to reject the North Carolina appeal.When the law passed, North Carolina Republicans said voter ID is a sound requirement to increase the integrity of elections. The 4th Circuit Court had branded the law as racially biased and said North Carolina lawmakers had targeted black voters “with almost surgical precision.”

North Carolina lawmakers took action immediately after the Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote had voided part of the historic Voting Rights Act that required some states, including North Carolina, to get federal approval before altering their voting laws. Michael Tomsic of member station WFAE wrote last fall about the lengthy battle over North Carolina's law, which was ostensibly meant to combat voter fraud:



"That fight began in 2013, when the state made cuts to early voting, created a photo ID requirement and eliminated same-day registration, out-of-precinct voting, and pre-registration of high school students. "Chief Justice John Roberts said the political situation created uncertainty over who is authorized to seek review of the lower court ruling.The dispute is similar to the court fight over Texas' voter ID law, also struck down as racially discriminatory.Republicans in both states moved to enact new voting measures after the Supreme Court in 2013 struck down a provision of the federal Voting Rights Act that had required them to get advance approval before changing laws dealing with elections.Voters, civil rights groups and the Obama administration quickly filed lawsuits challenging the new laws. Judge Thomas Schroeder ruled the law constitutional, in part because the plaintiffs had failed to adequately demonstrate the law had discriminated against black and Latino voters. “Given the blizzard of filings over who is and who is not authorized to seek review in this court under North Carolina law, it is important to recall our frequent admonition that the ‘denial of a writ of certiorari imports no expression of opinion upon the merits of the case,’” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said. Governor Cooper and North Carolina’s Democratic attorney general, Josh Stein, had told the justices they wanted to drop the state’s appeal of the 4th Circuit ruling. Former governor Pat McCrory supported the law as well as the appeal to the Supreme Court, but the situation was complicated when Democratic Gov.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the North Carolina state legislative members do not have standing to request an appeal of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruling against a law which it found discriminated against black voters.