NC's Voter Photo ID Law, Resurrected by the 4th Circuit

I can't be everywhere all the time, and I'm thankful for Jeffrey Billman and his Primer/North Carolina email newsletter for catching this action. I'm copying him here blatantly: 

Just in time for, um, next year’s municipal elections, the state’s voter ID law—passed in late 2018—is back. Yesterday, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a district court decision blocking the law, ruling that we have to give the NC General Assembly the benefit of the doubt:

The outcome hinges on the answer to a simple question: How much does the past matter? To the district court, the North Carolina General Assembly’s recent discriminatory past was effectively dispositive of the Challengers’ claims here. But the Supreme Court directs differently. A legislature’s past acts do not condemn the acts of a later legislature, which we must presume acts in good faith.

This isn’t the end of the road for opponents, as WRAL explains:

“This decision dealt with an injunction blocking implementation of the requirement, but a full trial on the constitutionality of that requirement is still to come in federal court. A separate lawsuit was also filed targeting this law at the state court level, and there’s a third lawsuit targeting multiple amendments to the state constitution, including voter ID. All three cases remain active.”