A federal judge appointed by President Barack Obama who once blocked North Carolina’s voter identification law reversed course Thursday and ruled it constitutional, handing Republicans a major win in their seven-year battle to secure the state’s elections.
Judge Loretta Biggs of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina upheld the law after finding that liberal voting rights groups suing the state’s election board failed to prove the requirement was discriminatory. The ruling keeps the law in place heading into the 2026 midterms.
North Carolina voters approved a constitutional amendment requiring photo identification at the polls in 2018, with roughly 55% voting in favor. The Republican-led state Senate then passed implementing legislation that same year. Democrats and voting rights organizations immediately sued, and Biggs issued a preliminary injunction in December 2019 that blocked the law from being enforced during the 2020 election cycle.
In that earlier opinion, Biggs had cited the state’s “sordid history of racial discrimination and voter suppression” and argued parts of the law were “impermissibly motivated, at least in part, by discriminatory intent.”
Thursday’s 134-page ruling marked a sharp turn. Biggs acknowledged she found evidence suggesting the law disenfranchised Black and Latino voters but concluded that controlling case law from higher courts left her no choice.
“This Court concludes that it is compelled by controlling case law to render Judgment in favor of the Defendants,” she wrote. The judge said precedent required her to “assign less weight to the historical background” and extend “almost impenetrable deference to the presumption of legislative good faith.”
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had already reversed Biggs’ 2019 injunction. The North Carolina Supreme Court separately upheld the law in a state-level challenge.
Republicans have argued the law was designed with broad flexibility, offering multiple forms of accepted ID to ensure all voters could participate while bolstering confidence in election results.
