On Friday, August 8th , at 5:00 p.m., District Judge Thomas Schroeder announced his decision to allow the provisions in North Carolina’s overhauled election law, recently challenged in court,to remain in effect – at least temporarily. Judge Schroeder ruled that opponents who sued to block the law had failed to show they were likely to suffer irreparable harm if the sweeping changes stayed in place until a trial set for July 2015.
Read a Reuters news story here.
Read the complete decision here.
As we shared last month, seven college students joined a challenge to the new election law alongside the N.A.A.C.P., the American Civil Liberties Union and the Justice Department, and three voter-registration advocates. The lawsuit, first filed in 2013, claimed that the new law–namely, its strict voter ID requirement–was passed in violation of the 14th, 15th, and 16th Amendments, as well as section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.