Obama judge nixes ID law, erases will of voters

A constitutional amendment mandating voter ID in the Tar Heel State was struck down on the last day of 2019. Even though North Carolina voters approved the measure by a ten-point margin in 2018, Federal District Judge Loretta Copeland Biggs unilaterally struck it down, ruling that it constitutes voter suppression and reflects the state's "sordid history of racial discrimination."

In an interview with OneNewsNow, Rev. Mark Creech of the Christian Action League of North Carolina says the ruling is a travesty.

"What Judge Loretta Biggs has done," he states, "is simply erased the vote of millions of North Carolinians who want to have photo ID to protect the integrity of the vote here in this state. And one federal judge says, 'No, no, I know better than all of you.'"

Biggs was nominated to the federal bench in 2014 by then-President Barack Obama, whose attorney general at the time was Eric Holder. Voting rights was, and continues to be, an urgent concern for the former AG. But Creech contends the ruling sends an unintentional message that he says is racist in itself.

"Many minorities voted for the [state's] photo ID constitutional amendment," the League's executive director points out, "and they found it quite disparaging, a ruling that implies that they're not smart enough, they're not industrious enough, they don't care enough … to get an ID."

Creech also notes the amendment provided for free IDs and was especially careful to assist minority communities in obtaining them.

The voiding of a state constitutional amendment by a single judge is especially alarming to Creech.

"We're going through a time in this country of what I suggest is judicial tyranny," he says. "We no longer have a government 'of the people, by the people and for the people.' Instead we've become 'of the courts, by the courts and for the courts.'"

According to a report by Voice of America, as of March 2019, a single federal judge had issued a nationwide injunction 30 times during the Trump administration alone:

"Until the 1960s, no court had issued a single nationwide injunction. In subsequent decades before U.S. President Barack Obama took office in 2009, federal district court judges issued an average of 1.5 such injunctions per year. But the number increased to 2.5 per year under Obama and jumped to a record 20 during President Donald Trump's first year in office."