{"id":17217,"date":"2016-07-29T15:39:03","date_gmt":"2016-07-29T19:39:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=17217"},"modified":"2016-07-29T15:39:03","modified_gmt":"2016-07-29T19:39:03","slug":"victory-in-the-fourth-circuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=17217","title":{"rendered":"victory in the Fourth Circuit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today, the\u00a04th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a wide-ranging North Carolina\u00a0voting law that was\u00a0passed in\u00a02013 and upheld by a federal district court. The Fourth Circuit found\u00a0that the legislature enacted these provisions with the intention (and not only the effect) of discriminating against Black voters.\u00a0The opinion\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/f\/?id=00000156-3775-d2b4-a3d7-b7fdaa6a0001\">says<\/a>, &#8220;in\u00a0holding that the legislature did not enact the challenged provisions with discriminatory intent, the court seems to have missed the forest in carefully surveying the many trees.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>My colleague Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg and I\u00a0wrote\u00a0an expert report\u00a0for this lawsuit, we were both deposed, and I testified in the North Carolina district court last year. We argued that the 2013 law\u00a0discriminated against young adults. That issue enters\u00a0the Appeals Court&#8217;s decision most explicitly in relation to one provision: &#8220;preregistration.&#8221; To quote the opinion:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Preregistration permitted 16- and 17-year-olds, when obtaining driver\u2019s licenses or\u00a0attending mandatory high school registration drives, to identify themselves and indicate their intent to vote. &#8230;\u00a0Although preregistration increased turnout among young adult voters, SL 2013-381 eliminated it. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The General Assembly\u2019s elimination of preregistration provides yet another troubling mismatch with its proffered justifications. Here, the record makes clear that the General Assembly contrived a problem in order to impose a solution. According to the State, the preregistration system was too confusing for young voters. SL 2013-381 thus sought, in the words of a sponsor of the law, to \u201coffer some clarity and some certainty as to when\u201d a \u201cyoung person is eligible to vote,\u201d by eliminating preregistration altogether. J.A. 3317.13 But, as the district court itself noted, that explanation does not hold water. The court found that \u201cpre-registration\u2019s removal [] ma[d]e registration <em>more<\/em> complex\u201d and prone to confusion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, the\u00a04th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a wide-ranging North Carolina\u00a0voting law that was\u00a0passed in\u00a02013 and upheld by a federal district court. The Fourth Circuit found\u00a0that the legislature enacted these provisions with the intention (and not only the effect) of discriminating against Black voters.\u00a0The opinion\u00a0says, &#8220;in\u00a0holding that the legislature did not enact the challenged [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-election"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17218,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17217\/revisions\/17218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}