Judge strikes down North Carolina law on prosecuting ex-felons who voted before 2024

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A federal judge has halted the enforcement of a North Carolina law that made it a serious crime for someone to vote while still on probation or parole for a felony conviction when they had simply violated the voting law by mistake.

The ruling was celebrated by groups representing poor residents and Black union members — and is limited, addressing some allegations of illegal voting conducted before 2024.

That's because the General Assembly amended the law last fall so that starting Jan. 1 a felony offender has to know they were breaking the law by voting for there for it to be considered a crime. But the old law had not been repealed.

The plaintiffs in a 2020 lawsuit said that people would still be subject to prosecution for votes allegedly cast before 2024 under the old rules, which didn't require intentionality to violate them. They said local district attorneys could otherwise still prosecute scores of pending cases.

In her ruling filed late Monday, U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs said that the pre-2024 law was unconstitutionally vague. She cited evidence in the case of DAs questioning whether intent was necessary as proof that the law lacked standards to prevent its arbitrary enforcement.

And Biggs wrote the pre-2024 law was tainted by racial bias, with its origins going back to the Jim Crow era.

“The Challenged Statute was enacted with discriminatory intent, has not been cleansed of its discriminatory taint, and continues to disproportionately impact Black voters,” Biggs said in granting the motion sought by lawyers for Action NC and the A. Philip Randolph Institute.

There is uncontested evidence of the law originating in an 1877 law that placed harsh penalties on disenfranchised felons, particularly Black residents, Biggs wrote. In recent...