Last Friday, three judges of the federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, struck down key parts of a North Carolina election law. Passed by a Republican legislature in 2013, the law imposed strict voter-identification requirements, reduced the state’s early-voting period, and made new-voter registration more difficult. In a forceful opinion, Judge Diana Motz, a Bill Clinton appointee, ruled that the law had been crafted in order to limit the number of black voters, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic. “Because of race,” Motz wrote, “the legislature enacted one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history.”
