NAACP Legal Defense Fund Statement on Supreme Court’s Decision Not to Review
North Carolina Voter ID Law
Earlier today, the Supreme Court announced that it would not take up the case against North Carolina’s “monster” voter suppression law, which the state passed shortly after the Supreme Court’s Shelby County decision in 2013. Last July, a panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found the law unconstitutional and invalidated it. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) issued the following statement in response:
“In declining to review this case, the Supreme Court has made the right decision. The evidence that this law was drafted with discriminatory intent was overwhelming – so overwhelming that the Fourth Circuit said it targeted minority voting rights with ‘surgical precision.’ In light of the Fourth Circuit’s definitive opinion, any review would have been superfluous. This announcement is a victory for American democracy, and it should send a clear message that similar laws will be revealed and rejected for what they are: state-sponsored attempts to suppress the right to vote.”
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Founded in 1940, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) is the nation’s first civil and human rights law organization and has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957—although LDF was originally founded by the NAACP and shares its commitment to equal rights. LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute is a multi-disciplinary and collaborative hub within LDF that launches targeted campaigns and undertakes innovative research to shape the civil rights narrative. In media attributions, please refer to us as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund or LDF.
