The Washington Post: Despite high court’s decision on N.C. voting law, activists worry about chief justice
J. Gerald Hebert of the Campaign Legal Center, one of the groups that had fought the North Carolina law, said two things became immediately clear. First, North Carolina legislative leaders would immediately begin rewriting the law. They will take pains to avoid some of the ham-handed legislative maneuvers that caused Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, writing for the 4th Circuit panel, to declare that the state had passed a law in the absence of a problem and “restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans.” Second, Roberts made it clear the justices were not endorsing the 4th Circuit’s reasoning by passing on the case. His statement was unusual — only on rare occasion during more than a decade on the job has Roberts explained his vote not to take a case — and it sent what seemed to be a signal for states whose laws are challenged to bring them to the Supreme Court.