For the second time in four years, a version of North Carolina’s election law was in federal court, this time based on allegations that if enacted, black and Latino voters would be disenfranchised.
Attorneys for the North Carolina NAACP and several local chapters, including Winston-Salem, were in a Winston-Salem courtroom Tuesday asking U.S. District Judge Loretta C. Biggs to grant a preliminary injunction that would block the law from going into effect for the March 3, 2020, primary elections.
They argued that black and Latino voters disproportionately lack the photo IDs required under the law and face more obstacles to obtaining those photo IDs. The law would result in black and Latino voters being denied the right to vote at the polls, they argued. They further argued that state Republicans intentionally put the law into place to racially discriminate against black and Latino voters. The North Carolina NAACP filed a federal lawsuit against the law in December 2018.