NC Voting Rights Challenge Goes To The Next Level

On September 9, 2014 the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Ordered an expedited review of the North Carolina voting rights case brought by the League of Women Voters of North Carolina and other voting rights groups challenging vote suppression measures passed last year by the Legislature. The Court set oral arguments in the case for September 25th in Charlotte. The groups, represented by SCSJ and the ACLU, want to halt implementation of new voting restrictions until a full trial is held on the merits of the changes. The Plaintiffs appealed to the Fourth Circuit after Judge Schroeder denied their request to halt the new voting restrictions until after the full trial next year.

“After Judge Schroeder’s ruling, for this election cycle, there would be no same-day registration, early voting days would be reduced from 17 to 10, and votes cast out-of-precinct would not be counted,” said SCSJ staff attorney George Eppsteiner. “The Court of Appeals has stepped in to review whether these changes should  go into effect before a full trial on North Carolina’s new voting laws is held in 2015. We contend that they should not.”

The previous week in a similar case in Ohio, the trial court granted a preliminary injunction stopping such changes from going into effect for the November 2014 elections in that state.
The Court of Appeals order may be found here.
Judge Schroeder’s August 8, 2014 ruling may be found here.
The Ohio case is Ohio State Conf. of the NAACP v. Husted, No. 2:14-cv-404, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 123442 (S.D. Ohio Sept. 4, 2014), available here.