A controversial voter ID amendment in North Carolina is no more.
The measure was one of two constitutional amendments passed in the last election that a superior court judge in North Carolina threw out on Friday.
Wake County Judge Bryan Collins ruled that a new voter ID amendment and a cap on state income tax, both passed by North Carolina residents in the 2018 midterm elections, violated the state constitution.
The amendments were a product of a controversial legislative process in Raleigh. The ballot items were ultimately written and approved by members who were elected within gerrymandered constituencies that had been previously ruled unconstitutional. A panel of three federal judges found in 2016 that the lines were drawn in a way that deliberately diminished African-American voters’ representation.
On the voter ID amendment, Collins wrote, “an illegally constituted General Assembly does not represent the people of North Carolina and is therefore not empowered to pass legislation that would amend the state’s constitution.”
T. Anthony Spearman, the head of the North Carolina NAACP, applauded the judge’s ruling in a statement and called for more steps to ensure better racial representation in the state’s democratic institutions.
“We are delighted that the acts of the previous majority, which came to power through the use of racially discriminatory maps, have been checked,” said Spearman. “The prior General Assembly’s attempt to use its ill-gotten power to enshrine a racist photo voter ID requirement in the state constitution was particularly egregious, and we applaud the court for invalidating these attempts at unconstitutional overreach.”
North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Robin Hayes says that the Collins ruling is a constitutional overreach.
“These amendments were placed on the ballot and passed by an overwhelming majority of North Carolinians,” Hayes said, per the News and Observer. “This unprecedented and absurd ruling by a liberal judge is the very definition of judicial activism.”
Voters approved two other constitutional amendments last election cycle: a reformation of the state’s hunting rules, and an expansion of rights in the state’s court system to crime victims. While both of those amendments were also written and approved by the state’s General Assembly the same way the voter ID and cap on state income tax amendments were, neither were part of the Collins ruling.
The constitutional amendment showdown that ensues with the ruling only adds to the list of controversies that have rocked North Carolina politics in the last months. The Tar Heel State’s board of elections called this week for a new election in the congressional race between the GOP’s Mark Harris and Democrat Dan McCready. The elections supervising entity declined to certify the results of that race after allegations of illegal absentee ballot tampering by the Harris campaign.
