U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Biggs deemed North Carolina's strict liability voter prosecution law unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment due to its racist origins and discriminatory impact on Black voters.
This law, enacted in 1877 to disenfranchise Black voters, penalized North Carolinians with felony convictions who voted while on parole, probation, or post-release supervision, without knowing they were ineligible, potentially facing two years in prison.
Judge Biggs highlighted the selective, arbitrary enforcement of the law that silenced voices of Black North Carolinians for over 145 years, emphasizing the discriminatory impact and origins which the state did not dispute.
The vagueness of the law's strict-liability nature gave North Carolina district attorneys discretion in enforcement, enabling personal biases, leading to the law's unconstitutional status based on discriminatory grounds.
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