A federal appeals court ruled against national and state Republicans in a challenge to 225,000 voter registrations in North Carolina, reversing a lower court’s ruling sending the challenge back to state court.
The challenge will now remain in federal court, where it faces steep odds, after a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit unanimously decided that it was “improper” for a judge to send Republicans’ claim back to state court, where it was first brought.
North Carolina election officials and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which intervened in the case, moved the GOP challenge to federal court and asked the district judge to dismiss two GOP claims. The district court dismissed a statutory claim but said it did not have jurisdiction to rule on the constitutional one.
“Here, the State Board refused to perform Plaintiffs’ requested act — striking certain registered voters from North Carolina’s voter rolls — on the ground that doing so within 90 days of a federal election would violate … the Civil Rights Act of 1964 … and the National Voter Registration Act of 1993,” Judge Nicole Berner wrote in the panel’s opinion.
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