## Facts

- After the Supreme Court’s decision limiting federal preclearance coverage, North Carolina enacted Session Law 2013-381 (HB 589), an omnibus election law.
- The law imposed a photo identification requirement for in-person voting that accepted a limited set of IDs.
- The law reduced early voting days, eliminated same-day registration during early voting, eliminated preregistration for 16- and 17-year-olds, and barred counting out-of-precinct provisional ballots.
- Before enactment, the legislature requested and received racial data about use of the affected voting mechanisms and about ID possession.
- The data showed Black voters disproportionately used the curtailed mechanisms and were less likely to possess the IDs accepted by the law.
- Plaintiffs (voter organizations and individual voters) and the United States challenged the law under § 2 of the Voting Rights Act and under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
- After a trial, the district court entered judgment for the State, rejecting both § 2 and intentional-discrimination claims.

## Issues

1. Whether the challenged provisions violated § 2 of the Voting Rights Act under the totality of circumstances by resulting in diminished opportunity for Black voters to participate in the political process.
2. Whether the provisions were enacted with discriminatory intent in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and the Fifteenth Amendment.
3. What injunctive relief was required, and whether “bail-in” preclearance under § 3(c) of the Voting Rights Act should be ordered.

## Decision

- The Fourth Circuit reversed the district court.
- The court held the challenged provisions violated § 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments because they were enacted with discriminatory intent.
- The court remanded with instructions to enjoin the challenged provisions.
- The court declined to impose § 3(c) bail-in preclearance, concluding an injunction provided sufficient relief on the record presented.

## Legal Principles

- § 2 liability turns on a jurisdiction-specific, totality-of-circumstances inquiry into whether minority voters have less opportunity than others to participate in the political process and elect representatives of their choice.
- Discriminatory intent may be proved through circumstantial evidence under the Arlington Heights framework, including historical background, sequence of events, procedural departures, legislative history, and foreseeable disparate impact.
- A law violates the Fourteenth Amendment and the Fifteenth Amendment when enacted “because of,” not merely “in spite of,” its adverse racial effects.
- Evidence that lawmakers sought racial usage data and then restricted the mechanisms most used by the affected racial group supports an inference of intentional discrimination.
- Claimed state interests (such as preventing voter fraud) may be rejected as pretext where the fit between means and ends is weak and the record does not substantiate the asserted problem.

## Conclusion

The Fourth Circuit invalidated and ordered an injunction against major components of North Carolina’s 2013 election law, finding that the legislature used racial data to craft restrictions that predictably and disproportionately burdened Black voters and did so with discriminatory intent, in violation of § 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.


N.C. State Conf. of NAACP v. McCrory, 831 F.3d 204 (4th Cir. 2016)