An Obama-appointed judge rules that North Carolina’s voter ID law is constitutional

An Obama-appointed federal judge who blocked North Carolina’s voter ID law has struck down the law and ruled it constitutional, handing a major victory to Republicans and election security advocates after a seven-year court battle.

Judge Loretta Biggs upheld the law Thursday, finding voting rights groups that sued the North Carolina board of elections failed to prove the voter ID law is discriminatory. The decision leaves North Carolina’s voter ID law in place before the 2026 midterm elections.

It also comes as President Donald Trump is pushing for tougher voter ID laws across the country, which he says are widespread voter fraud and prevent illegal immigrants from voting.

The North Carolina case centered on a bill the GOP-led Senate introduced in 2018 to regulate how the state would enforce an amendment requiring voters to present a photo ID at the polls. The amendment was approved by about 55% of North Carolina voters and the law specified how the amendment would be implemented.

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“Finally. After seven years, we can put to rest any doubts about the constitutionality of our state’s Voter ID law,” said Republican state Sen. Phil Berger, who intervened in the case to defend the law.

Biggs emphasized in his 134-page decision that North Carolina has “a history of statutory discrimination against African Americans” that the parties in the case do not dispute. The judge said he found evidence that the voter ID law helped disenfranchise Black and Latino voters, but the Supreme Court rulings said the evidence was insufficient to make the law legal.

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President Donald Trump holds a Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, March 26, 2026. (REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein)

“This Court … concludes that it is bound by the control of the case law to enter a Judgment in favor of the Defendants,” Biggs said, dismissing the plaintiffs’ claims that the law violates the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the Voting Rights Act.

The judge said that “the case law requires this Court to give less weight to historical background. It also requires deference that cannot be afforded to the presumption of good faith in the law.”

The judge’s findings agree with prominent Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., who have called the voter ID laws “Jim Crow 2.0.” Schumer said the SAVE America Act, which he has not yet blocked from passing the Senate, “is a blow to the heart of our democracy.”

Trump has been urging Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a bill that would make it a nationwide requirement that people provide physical proof of American citizenship when they register to vote. But tensions flared on Capitol Hill after the bill passed the House but stalled in the Senate over opposition from Democrats.

The decision marked a reversal for Biggs after he issued a preliminary injunction in December 2019 that prevented the state from enforcing the voter ID law for the 2020 election cycle. In that opinion, he cited “the state’s sordid history of racial discrimination and voter suppression,” arguing that parts of the law were “improperly motivated, at least in part, by discriminatory intent.”

In this file photo, Feb. 26, 2014, an election official checks a voter’s photo identification at an early voting location in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

His order was later overturned by the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. The state Supreme Court also upheld the law in a separate state-level case.

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North Carolina Republicans have defended the law with one designed to accommodate all voters, saying it provides a variety of ways to identify voters while also increasing integrity and confidence in elections.