North Carolina filed an emergency application Monday to the Supreme Court via Chief Justice John Roberts to halt some aspects of a ruling handed down by an appeals court last month that struck down Republican-passed voting restrictions in the state. The stay petition asks that portions of the ruling be put on hold for November’s election while the full case is appealed to the high court.
North Carolina is asking the Supreme Court to allow it to enforce its photo voter ID law, its cutbacks to early voting and its elimination of pre-registration. The petition did not include requests that its ban on same-day registration and prohibition of out-of-precinct be in effect in November’s election. All five provisions had been deemed discriminatory in their intent by a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in late July. The decision was a reversal of a district court’s ruling that sided with the state.
“To our knowledge, that marks the first time in the past half century that a court of appeals has reversed a fact-finder’s finding that a State did not enact an election law with discriminatory intent, and the first time in history that a court has invalidated as intentionally discriminatory an election law that has been affirmatively found to have no discriminatory effect,” North Carolina said in its stay petition Monday. The state argued that there “is certainly a fair prospect that this Court will reverse the entirety of the decision,” but that in the interest of “preserving the status quo this close to an election” North Carolina was asking that only some of the provisions be enforced in November.
As UC-Irvine School of Law professor Rick Hasen noted on his Election Law blog, the state has apparently hired Paul Clement, a high-profile Washington D.C. attorney and former U.S. solicitor general. The state’s attorney general, Roy Cooper (D), who is running for governor, has refused to defend the law.
Read the full petition below:
Final NC Emergency Application by hasenr on Scribd
What are the chances? Anyone know?
Pretty much asking if they can continue their plan to suppress the black vote in order to try to win the upcoming election.
I’m no legal scholar, but it seems to me the abiding legal principle is: No Scalia, no dice.
it kinda depends, I think, if Roberts is responsible for that District Court then he could issue the stay himself but if he does then I think it has to go to the full court for a hearing…
it would take 4 votes to bring it to the full Court…
if Roberts thinks that bringing it to the full Court might result in a 4-4 decision it means the lower Court decision would apply… and if so… why bother to issue the stay unless he thinks it the hearing could be delayed until after the election…
I could be mixing some things up but I think that’s how it might go…
It depends on if this is something Roberts can put a hold on himself or if it requires other justices. If he can do it himself he will, based on the idea that rules shouldn’t change so close to an election. I think that’s BS, especially when it disenfranchises voters, but it is a reasonable argument to make because of how it could impact running an election. If Roberts can’t do it himself, then he will require three other votes…Alito and Thomas will be there, but I don’t know what Kennedy’s history is on these topics.
Note they are just trying to halt the decision for now, because they will lose if they do the whole appeal. This is strategic on their part, the court will, at best, split on this, which means they lose, so they can’t ask for a full appeal before the election.