Race, Again, in North Carolina

By GENE NICHOL

No surprise here. In February, yet again, a three-judge court ruled that the North Carolina General Assembly had used its powers to prevent African-Americans from exercising equal rights of political participation. The N.C. Court of Appeals determined that “discriminatory intent” was likely the “primary motivating factor” driving Republican lawmakers’ new voter ID law. “The evidence shows,” the judges wrote, the General Assembly skewed acceptable forms of identification “to target African-Americans voters rather than to comply with a newly created constitutional amendment.”

A federal court had reached the same conclusion weeks earlier. Judge Loretta Biggs found that not only were “minority voters less likely to have an acceptable form of ID, but the legislature excluded photographic IDs that would have greatly reduced the discrepancy.” For the umpteenth time, the Republican caucuses of the General Assembly - what Republican Representative Holly Grange of Wilmington candidly calls “the middle-age white man’s club” – used the tools of government to intentionally discriminate against black citizens. They act like it’s their job.

Also on cue, Republican leaders wailed. House Speaker Tim Moore called the federal ruling an “attempt by an activist federal judge to overturn the will of the voters.” The state judges, Moore complained, without irony, offered a “judicial attempt to suppress the people’s voice in the democratic process.” NC GOP Chairman Michael Whatley explained he was “very disappointed” to see the statute “overturned by judicial fiat.” Republican Senators Warren Daniel and Joyce Kraviec said Democrats and their judicial allies “will have to answer” in November for the unjustified intervention. Apparently there are a lot of wild-eyed judges in North Carolina.

To refresh your recollection, in 2016, a federal court held that the congressional districts created by the General Assembly were designed to limit effective black participation, not to comply with the Voting Rights Act, as Republican lawmakers had claimed. The Republican-dominated United States Supreme Court agreed.

The next year, the state legislature’s electoral districts were also thrown out. There, judges determined that the racial discrimination was a “widespread, serious and longstanding constitutional violation.” It represented one of the “largest racial gerrymanders ever confronted by a federal court.” And it deprived African-Americans of a “constitutionally adequate voice in the state legislature.”

Around the same time, another federal court invalidated North Carolina’s “monster voter ID law” as a “precision” instrument to disenfranchise black voters. Lawmakers’ purported interest in ballot integrity was held to be a mere ruse, a lie. The federal panel concluded: “Neither this legislature, nor, as far as we can tell, any other legislature in the country, has ever done so much, so fast, to restrict access to the franchise.” First place. Yet again.

And in 2015, over local objections, using an oddly “truncated process,” legislators unilaterally re-cast Greensboro’s city council districts. The federal courts again found the move to be rooted in race discrimination – aiming to suppress the electoral effectiveness of black voters and candidates. Once more, as on each occasion described above, Republicans complained of biased, lawless, activist, political and tyrannical judges. It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for them. Bless their hearts.

The 15th Amendment, making it unconstitutional to deny the right to vote on the basis of race, was passed in 1870. The Supreme Court outlawed state-imposed race discrimination in 1954. It held that electoral districts can’t be drawn to disenfranchise African-Americans in 1960. The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. Using race in legislative classification was barred in 1967. Using race as a “predominant factor” in government decision-making was invalidated in 1976.

Some ambush. Some tyranny.

Gene Nichol is Boyd Tinsley Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law and in 2015 started the North Carolina Poverty Research Fund after the UNC Board of Governors closed the state-funded Poverty Center for publishing articles critical of the governor and General Assembly.

From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2020

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