Integrity Advocates Pan Supreme Court Duck on Voter ID

The Supreme Court on Monday decided not to wade into a legal battle over North Carolina’s blocked voter identification law, disappointing election-integrity advocates.

A federal appeals court struck down the 2013 law last year, ruling that it targeted black voters with “almost surgical precision.”

“North Carolina voters are the real losers in today’s Supreme Court decision to not take up the voter ID case.”

North Carolina’s new Democratic governor and attorney general, Roy Cooper and Josh Stein, respectively, asked the court to dismiss the state’s petition. The Republican-controlled state legislature hired its own lawyers to pursue the appeal.

But the justices declined to take the case, leaving the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in place. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the decision should not be interpreted as a statement on the constitutionality of voter ID laws.

“Given the blizzard of filings over who is and who is not authorized to seek review in this Court under North Carolina law, it is important to recall our frequent admonition that ‘[t]he denial of a writ of certiorari imports no expression of opinion upon the merits of the case,'” he wrote.

Organizations favoring stronger protections against voter fraud expressed disappointment.

“North Carolina voters are the real losers in today’s Supreme Court decision to not take up the voter ID case,” Public Interest Legal Foundation President J. Christian Adams said in a prepared statement.

Adams noted that North Carolina officials recently documented more than 500 instances of illegal voting in the 2016 election.

North Carolina lawmakers could try to redraft the law in a way that would address the appeals court’s concerns. But Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at the Heritage Foundation, said they would face a high legal and political burden.

“I think they could do it,” he told LifeZette. “But I’m not sure they could get it by the governor.”

Despite doubts from the Left, President Donald Trump last week created a commission to study voter fraud and develop strategies to combat it.

Lawyers for Republican lawmakers argued in a Supreme Court filing that Stein lacks the authority under state law to override the determination of the legislature.

What’s more, the filing states, it is an ethical breach for Stein to make decisions regarding the case since he previously was a witness in the case.

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“As previously explained, not only does [Attorney] General Stein lack authority under the plain terms of North Carolina law to override the General Assembly’s decision to defend the challenged laws at issue, but Stein should be barred from participating at all by the canons of professional ethics because he testified at trial in this case as a witness for the Plaintiffs,” the lawyers wrote.

Von Spakovsky said attorneys general typically defend laws duly passed by their legislatures, even if they personally disagree with the policies.

“This is extremely unusual,” he said.