Voting Rights Act timeline
Aug. 6, 1965 – Voting Rights Act signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson.
July 27, 2006 – 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act signed into law by President George W. Bush.
June 25, 2013 – U.S. Supreme Court rules, in Shelby County v. Holder, that the formula to determine in which areas of the country the federal government must approve new voting laws is unconstitutionally outdated.
Aug. 12, 2013 – No longer required to pre-submit new voting laws, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signs a law to institute Voter ID, reduce early voting, eliminate same-day registration and halt counting of votes cast out of precinct. Activist groups file suit the same day under a different section of the Voting Rights Act, claiming the law discriminates against blacks.
Sept. 20, 2013 – The U.S. Department of Justice joins the suit against North Carolina, claiming the law intended to discriminate against blacks and the state should be put under preclearance for new voting laws in the rarely used “bail-in” provision of the Voting Rights Act.
June 18, 2015 – The North Carolina Legislature passes a bipartisan deal to soften the Voter ID requirement, taking the issue off the table in the lawsuit.
July 13, 2015 – Trial begins in Winston-Salem, N.C., in the case of North Carolina NAACP v. McCrory.
By the thousands, protesters crowded this city’s streets Monday to link the voting rights clash in a federal courtroom to a bloody confrontation on an Alabama bridge a half-century ago.
The crowd’s refrain: “This is our Selma.”
The nationally watched case against North Carolina’s 2013 voting restrictions provides a landmark test for the Voting Rights Act’s future and the power of the U.S. Department of Justice.
“What is the dastardly thing North Carolina has done that has been equated to the events in Selma?” Thomas Farr, an attorney for the state, asked in his opening statement Monday, accusing his foes of hyperbole.
In addition to a strict voter ID component, the challenged law cuts down early voting, eliminates same-day registration and disallows any votes cast in the wrong precinct. The law's proponents say it will cut down on fraud and save the state money while its critics say it cracks down on practices favored by minorities
Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, signed the challenged law less than two months after the U.S. Supreme Court removed the requirement that states with a history of discrimination — including North Carolina and Georgia — submit voting law changes to the federal government before they could be enacted.
On the day McCrory signed the law, the NAACP, the League of Women Voters and others immediately filed suit, saying the law violates a remaining piece of the Voting Rights Act because of its effect on minority voters.
They were joined shortly after by the U.S. Department of Justice, which is taking the aggressive tact of trying to force North Carolina back under "preclearance" for all new voting laws.
While the Supreme Court ruled the formula targeting mostly Southern states for preclearance to be unconstitutionally outdated, the Voting Rights Act still allows for preclearance to be imposed by a court in the case of intentional discrimination — an exceedingly high bar for the Justice Department to prove. The department is also seeking to impose preclearance on Texas.
The plaintiffs tried unsuccessfully to put the law on hold before the 2014 election. North Carolina contends that the results from last fall show that the law is benign because African-American turnout increased from the 2010 midterms, and at a higher rate than whites.
Because these changes apply to all voters equally, North Carolina contends they are “neutral,” while the plaintiffs compared them to insidious tactics of the civil rights era.
“Poll taxes were neutral on their face; literacy tests were neutral on their face,” NAACP attorney Penda Hair said in her opening statement.
“The law teaches it is the impact that matters — an impact that is linked to social and historical conditions — not whether a law explicitly says African-Americans or Latinos are not allowed to vote,” she said.
Hair said that not only do minorities disproportionately use the voting practices North Carolina curtailed or eliminated, but legislators intentionally targeted those groups.
The first witnesses Monday included average voters who had shown up to the wrong precinct and cast a provisional ballot that later was not counted.
“It really made me feel deprived,” said the Rev. Moses Colbert, 60, who spent six hours of his Saturday going back and forth between two counties because of a Department of Motor Vehicles miscue.
Butch Bowers, an attorney for North Carolina, pointed to the fact that Colbert is now properly registered in his new home and the same trouble had not befallen his wife, who also is African-American.
The state's Voter ID law is not being challenged in this trial, after the General Assembly passed a bill this year to soften the requirement
Though some local jurisdictions have drawn criticism, Georgia's Legislature has not taken any big voting actions since it came out from under "preclearance." In fact, in 2014, DeKalb County and others added a Sunday early-voting day — a popular day for African-American churches to send "souls to the polls." But the legal precedents set here will resonate across the country.
The bench trial is expected to last two weeks. An appeal is all but certain regardless of the ruling of U.S. District Judge Thomas D. Schroeder.
Lawyers and activists lined up hours in advance to pack the courtroom Monday. In the streets outside, emotions ran high.
The NAACP and others organized the biggest rally yet of the “Moral Monday” movement, a group of clergy and others that started protesting the conservative turn by newly elected McCrory and the General Assembly in 2013.
The North Carolina Republican Party struck back Monday by pointing to Service Employees International Union donations to Moral Monday.
An attorney on the case also is tied to Democrat Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
“Out-of-state unions and Hillary Clinton are trying to make it easier for them to cheat in the coming election,” North Carolina Republican Party spokesman Ricky Diaz said.
He spoke on the fringes of a rally that attracted several thousand activists to downtown Winston-Salem. They marched 10 abreast chanting “No justice, no peace,” a multiracial throng representing all manner of religious groups, civic organizations and labor unions.
The Rev. William Barber II — a Moral Monday leader who also testified in court Monday — delivered a closing speech heavy on civil rights history and a denunciation of the voting law in moral terms.
“We must resist this sin,” Barber said, “because too many have died, too many have suffered, too many have bled. There’s too much power in the blood for us to be silenced now.”
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