Civil and Human Rights Coalition Welcomes Supreme Court’s Action to Let Discriminatory Voting Law Die

WASHINGTON— Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, issued the following statement on the Supreme Court’s decision not to review a federal appeals court decision that found that North Carolina’s 2013 voting law was discriminatory:

“Today’s decision by the Supreme Court means that voters in North Carolina will not be burdened with a rabidly discriminatory voting law that, as the appeals court found, targets ‘African Americans with almost surgical precision.’ But the fight to protect our democracy from these and other discriminatory voting laws remains critical to the future of our democracy.”

Fighting this law took a tremendous effort and expenditure of resources. We commend the organizations that challenged North Carolina’s discriminatory law, including the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, ACLU, North Carolina NAACP, and the ACLU of North Carolina for representing the League of Women Voters of North Carolina, the North Carolina A. Philip Randolph Institute, North Carolina Common Cause, Unifour Onestop Collaborative, and several individuals in this case.

This case would not have been necessary had the Supreme Court not gutted the Voting Rights Act four years ago in Shelby County v. Holder. The North Carolina battle and related fights in Texas and other states show how voting discrimination continues to plague our democracy.

Rather than establish a commission to investigate the nearly nonexistent problem of voter fraud, as President Trump did last week, we again call on the president and Congress to address the real integrity issues plaguing our elections by enacting vital voting protections and working to eliminate unnecessary barriers that prevent Americans from exercising their right to vote.”

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is a coalition charged by its diverse membership of more than 200 national organizations to promote and protect the rights of all persons in the United States. The Leadership Conference works toward an America as good as its ideals. For more information on The Leadership Conference and its 200-plus member organizations, visit www.civilrights.org.

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