Holmes v. Moore

• Decision Date: 16 December 2022
• Docket Number: 342PA19-2
• Parties: JABARI HOLMES, FRED CULP, DANIEL E. SMITH, BRENDON JADEN PEAY, and PAUL KEARNEY, SR. v. TIMOTHY K. MOORE, in his official capacity as Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives; PHILIP E. BERGER, in his official capacity as President Pro Tempore of the North Carolina Senate; DAVID R. LEWIS, in his official capacity as Chairman of the House Select Committee on Elections for the 2018 Third Extra Session; RALPH E. HISE, in his official capacity as Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Elections for the 2018 Third Extra Session; THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA; and THE NORTH CAROLINA STATE BOARD OF ELECTIONS
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

1

2022-NCSC-122

JABARI HOLMES, FRED CULP, DANIEL E. SMITH, BRENDON JADEN PEAY, and PAUL KEARNEY, SR. v. TIMOTHY K. MOORE, in his official capacity as Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives; PHILIP E. BERGER, in his official capacity as President Pro Tempore of the North Carolina Senate; DAVID R. LEWIS, in his official capacity as Chairman of the House Select Committee on Elections for the 2018 Third Extra Session; RALPH E. HISE, in his official capacity as Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Elections for the 2018 Third Extra Session; THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA; and THE NORTH CAROLINA STATE BOARD OF ELECTIONS

No. 342PA19-2

Supreme Court of North Carolina

December 16, 2022

Heard in the Supreme Court on 3 October 2022 in session in the Historic 1767 Old Chowan County Courthouse in the Town of Edenton pursuant to N.C. G.S. § 7A-10(a).

On discretionary review pursuant to N.C. G.S. § 7A-31 prior to a determination by the Court of Appeals of a final judgment and order entered on 17 September 2021 by a three-judge panel of the Superior Court, Wake County appointed by the Chief Justice following transfer of the matter to the panel pursuant to N.C. G.S. § 1-267.1.

Southern Coalition for Social Justice, by Jeffery Loperfido Allison J. Riggs and Hilary Harris Klein; and Paul, Weiss Rifkind Wharton &Garrison LLP, by Jane B. O'Brien pro hac vice, Paul D. Brachman, pro hac vice, and Andrew J. Ehrlich, pro hac vice; for plaintiff-appellees.

Cooper &Kirk, PLLC, by Nicole J. Moss, David H. Thompson, pro hac vice, Peter A. Patterson, pro hac vice, Joseph O. Masterman, pro hac vice, John W. Tienken, pro hac vice, and Nicholas Varone, pro hac vice; and K&L Gates, by Nathan A. Huff, for legislative defendant-appellants.

Joshua H. Stein, Attorney General, by Terence Steed, Special Attorney General, Laura McHenry, Senior Deputy Attorney General, and Mary Carla Babb, Special Deputy Attorney General for defendant-appellants State of North Carolina and North Carolina State of Board of Elections.

Fox Rothschild LLP, by Matthew Nis Leerberg, for Professor Justin Grimmer, amicus curiae.

Nelson Mullins Riley &Scarborough, LLP, by Andrew D. Brown, Phillip J. Strach, and John E. Branch III, for Lawyers Democracy Fund, amicus curiae.

Roger W. Knight, P.A., by Roger Knight, for National Republican Senatorial Committee, amicus curiae.

Kevin Cline Law, PLLC, by Kevin J. Cline; and Philip R. Thomas for North Carolina Republican Party, amicus curiae.

EARLS JUSTICE

¶ 1 The right to vote is a fundamental right, preservative of all other rights. Blankenship v. Bartlett, 363 N.C. 518, 522 (2009); see also Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 562 (1964). If the right to vote is undermined, it renders illusory all "[o]ther rights, even the most basic." Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1, 17 (1964). Therefore, "since the right to exercise the franchise in a free and unimpaired manner is preservative of other basic civil and political rights, any alleged infringement of the right of citizens to vote must be carefully and meticulously scrutinized." Reynolds, 377 U.S. at 562. But "[f]or much of our Nation's history, that right sadly has been denied to many because of race." Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630, 639 (1993).

¶ 2 Concerning qualifications for students to vote, this Court has recognized the basic proposition that "any state law which tends to affect the right to vote by way of making classifications must be scrutinized for conformity with the Equal Protection Clause" and that "otherwise eligible persons who reside in a community and are subject to its laws must be permitted to vote there even though their interests may differ from the majority of the community's residents." Lloyd v. Babb, 296 N.C. 416, 440 (1979). Furthermore, as the United States Supreme Court has observed:

But we must remember that the interest of the State, when it comes to voting, is limited to the power to fix qualifications. Wealth, like race, creed, or color, is not germane to one's ability to participate intelligently in the electoral process. Lines drawn on the basis of wealth or property, like those of race (Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 216), are traditionally disfavored.

Harper v. Va. Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 668 (1966) (emphasis added) (first citing Edwards v. California, 314 U.S. 160, 184-185 (1941) (Jackson, J., concurring); then citing Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12 (1956); and then citing Douglas v. California, 372 U.S. 353 (1963)); see also United States v. Vaello-Madero, 142 S.Ct. 1539, 1550 (2022) ("[T]he Constitution of the United States, in its present form, forbids, so far as civil and political rights are concerned, discrimination by the General Government, or by the States, against any citizen because of his race. All citizens are equal before the law." (quoting Gibson v. Mississippi, 162 U.S. 565 (1896)). "It has accordingly been held generally in the States that, whether the particular provisions of an act of legislation, establishing means for ascertaining the qualifications of those entitled to vote . . . were or were not reasonable regulations, and accordingly valid or void, was always open to inquiry, as a judicial question." See Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 371 (1886) (first citing Daggett v. Hudson, 43 Ohio St. 548, 3 N.E. 38 (1885) (collecting cases); Monroe v. Collins, 17 Ohio St. 665 (1867)).

¶ 3 The trial court in this case found that Senate Bill 824 (S.B. 824), the statute enacted to require that every voter present one of a few specific forms of photo identification, was enacted with a racially discriminatory purpose. Plaintiffs challenged S.B. 824, which requires a photo identification (ID) to vote, under article I, section 19, of the North Carolina Constitution, alleging the law was enacted at least in part with the intent to discriminate against African-American voters. While most people who have one of the acceptable forms of photo identification do not run the risk of being disenfranchised by this statute, the experiences of plaintiffs and other witnesses at trial showed that for themselves and others like them, the risk of disenfranchisement is very real. But the guarantee of equal protection of the laws means that a law enacted with the intent to discriminate on the basis of race is unconstitutional even if no voter ultimately is disenfranchised because "[r]acial classifications of any sort pose the risk of lasting harm to our society. They reinforce the belief, held by too many for too much of our history, that individuals should be judged by the color of their skin. Racial classifications with respect to voting carry particular dangers." Shaw, 509 U.S. at 657.

¶ 4 The question before this Court is whether the three-judge panel's finding that S.B. 824 was motivated by racial discrimination is supported by competent evidence in the record and whether the trial court correctly applied the Arlington Heights factors when it found S.B. 824 was enacted at least in part with racially discriminatory intent. See Vill. of Arlington Heights v. Metro. Hous. Dev. Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 265-68 (1977); see also, Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U.S. 273, 288 (1982) (a finding of purposeful racial discrimination is a finding of fact not to be overturned unless clearly erroneous and "[t]reating issues of intent as factual matters for the trier of fact is commonplace.") We hold that the three-judge panel's findings of fact are supported by competent evidence showing that the statute was motivated by a racially discriminatory purpose, and that the trial court correctly applied the Arlington Heights factors to the specific facts of this case. See Vill. of Arlington Heights, 429 U.S. at 265-68. By applying well-settled law concerning how the right to equal protection is secured under article I, section 19 of the North Carolina Constitution, the trial court's ruling does not mean that any voter ID law enacted in North Carolina would violate the equal protection guarantee, only that the provisions enacted by this General Assembly in S.B. 824 were formulated with an impermissible intent to discriminate against African-American voters in violation of the North Carolina Constitution.

I. Background

¶ 5 Based on the evidence before it, the trial court found that voting in North Carolina is currently, and has been historically, racially polarized.^[1] In recent years, white voters have favored the Republican Party, while the majority of African-American voters have favored the Democratic Party. As the trial court and Court of Appeals noted, this polarization "offers a political payoff" for legislators to dilute or limit the minority vote." Holmes v. Moore, 270 N.C.App. 7, 22 (2020) (cleaned up); see Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30, 62-63 (1986) (plurality) (explaining that polarization renders minority voters uniquely vulnerable to elected officials who can entrench themselves by targeting groups unlikely to vote for them). Because of the nature of racially polarized voting in North Carolina, if the State enacts restrictions on voting and procedures that weigh more heavily on African-American voters, this practice will "predictably redound to the benefit of one political party and to the disadvantage of the other." N.C. State Conf. of the NAACP v McCrory, 831 F.3d 204, 214 (4th Cir. 2016) (cert denied sub nom. North Carolina v. N.C State Conf. of the NAACP, 137 S.Ct. 1399 (2017)). North Carolina also has a long history of race discrimination generally and race-based voter suppression in particular. Although laws that limit African-American political participation have frequently been raceneutral on their face, they have "nevertheless had profoundly discriminatory effects." Thus, equal access to the ballot box remains a...