Obama administration files second suit over voting requirements

“North Carolina is in the mainstream on this issue and it is the Justice Department that is working on the fringes. … This lawsuit will only result in costly legal bills.”

— North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory

North Carolina’s Republican governor is vowing to fight a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Justice Department on Monday, challenging the state’s new elections law on the grounds it disproportionately excludes minority voters.

Gov. Pat McCrory said he had hired a private lawyer to help defend the new law from what he suggested was a partisan attack. The suit is the latest effort by the Democratic Obama administration to counter a June 25 Supreme Court decision that struck down the most powerful part of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“I believe the federal government action is an overreach and without merit,” McCrory said at a brief media conference during which he took no questions. “I firmly believe we have done the right thing. I believe this is good law.”

The 5-4 Supreme Court decision freed states, many of them in the South, from strict federal oversight of their elections. Following the decision, the Justice Department signaled it would seek legal action against states enacting laws it believes are aimed at suppressing minority voters.

The first of those suits, filed Aug. 22, challenged Texas’ voter ID law. The Justice Department is also seeking to intervene in a lawsuit over Texas’ legislative redistricting law, which minority groups charge is discriminatory.

North Carolina’s law, approved within days of the court’s decision, was widely expected to be the next target. It cuts early voting by a week, ends same-day voter registration and includes a stringent photo ID requirement. The measure also eliminated a popular high school civics program that encouraged students to register to vote in advance of their 18th birthday.

More than 70 percent of African-Americans who cast a ballot in North Carolina during the past two presidential elections voted early. Studies show minority voters are also more likely to lack a driver’s license. And students, like minority groups, are statistically more likely to vote Democratic.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said his agency would show in court that the intent of the North Carolina law is to suppress voter turnout, especially among minority and low-income voters.

“By restricting access and ease of voter participation, this new law would shrink, rather than expand, access” to voting, Holder said. “Allowing limits on voting rights that disproportionately exclude minority voters would be inconsistent with our ideals as a nation.”

State Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger and House Speaker Thom Tillis issued a statement that rejectedrejecting Holder’s argument. “The Obama Justice Department’s baseless claims about North Carolina’s election reform law are nothing more than an obvious attempt to quash the will of the voters and hinder a hugely popular voter ID requirement,” they said.

McCrory’s office said he had retained lawyer Karl S. “Butch” Bowers Jr., to defend the GOP-backed elections changes. Bowers, of Columbia, S.C., served during the Justice Department’s special counsel for voting matters during the administration of President George W. Bush.

In addition, the state’s Republican-run legislature has hired outside legal counsel at taxpayers’ expense to defend the new law. Attorney General Roy Cooper, whose office typically takes the lead on defending the state in court, is a Democrat who may seek to challenge McCrory for governor in 2016, when the new voter ID requirements are due to take full effect.

North Carolina is among at least five Southern states adopting stricter voter ID and other election laws. As in those states, North Carolina Republicans have said the voter ID requirements are needed to combat voter fraud, which they claim is endemic despite lack of evidence of widespread voting irregularities.