Jurisdiction of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals

On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act, ruling that states with the longest histories of voting discrimination no longer had to approve their voting changes with the federal government. A month after that decision, North Carolina—where 40 counties were previously subject to that requirement—passed the country’s most sweeping voting restrictions.

The state required strict voter ID to cast a ballot, cut a week of early voting and eliminated same-day voter registration, out of precinct voting and pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-olds. Today the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit invalidated these restrictions, which it said “targeted African Americans with almost surgical precision” in violation of the Voting Rights Act and the 14th Amendment. It reversed a 485-page decision by the district court upholding the law.

This is a huge victory for voting rights—the most significant in the country since the Shelby County v. Holder decision—that will make it easier for hundreds of thousands of voters to cast a […]