NC Supreme Court takes up another voter ID case

The decision is one more step toward resolving the long debate issue of requiring photo ID at North Carolina's polls.

Posted 5:26 p.m. Mar 3, 2022 — Updated 7:49 p.m. Mar 3, 2022

Travis Fain

, WRAL state government reporter

The North Carolina Supreme Court has agreed to take up one of several cases targeting North Carolina's voter ID law, potentially speeding up resolution of an issue the state has gone back-and-forth on for a decade.

The state's high court is expected to hear arguments in the lawsuit this summer, skipping over the N.C. Court of Appeals. The Southern Coalition for Social Justice, which brought this case, requested the acceleration on an issue that was already anticipated to go before the state Supreme Court.

A three-judge panel in a lower court tossed the state's photo ID law in September, saying in a 2-1 decision that the Republican lawmakers who passed it were motivated "at least in part by an unconstitutional intent to target African American voters."

Two other lawsuits also affect the photo ID requirement, which voters added to the state constitution during a 2018 referendum. One was heard in February by the state Supreme Court. The other is in federal court, but delayed while the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether GOP lawmakers who passed voter ID or the state's Democratic attorney general should defend the law in court.

In a statement Thursday, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice praised the state Supreme Court's decision to expedite their case, Holmes v. Moore.

“North Carolina voters deserve certainty in their elections,” senior counsel Jeff Loperfido said in the statement. “The court’s action to hear this case without delay brings our state one step closer to the important work of replacing the current discriminatory voter ID requirement with a law respecting the constitutional rights of all North Carolina voters.”

Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger's spokeswoman chastised the coalition Thursday for "forum shopping so they can get their case in front of their Democratic allies quicker." The state Supreme Court has a 4-3 Democratic majority.

"The Supreme Court’s willingness to circumvent the Court of Appeals whenever it is politically advantageous to the plaintiffs is destructive to the credibility of the judicial system," Berger spokeswoman Lauren Horsch said in a statement.

The Southern Coalition's case doesn't target North Carolina's constitutional amendment on voter ID. Instead, it focuses on a subsequent law that added more detailed rules on enforcement. Republicans met in a lame-duck session after the November 2018 constitutional referendum to enact those rules while they still had a veto-proof super majority, which Democrats had broken in those same November elections.

Republican lawmakers have said that the law they passed, Senate Bill 824, allows a wide range of photo IDs to be used at the poll, that it was modeled after laws in use in other states and that it's constitutional.

"At trial, plaintiffs could not produce a single witness who would be unable to vote because of the law," Sam Hayes, general counsel for Moore, said after the three-judge panel struck down the law in September.

That panel was made up of two Republicans and one Democrat, and the decision broke on party lines.

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