The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit yesterday to block North Carolina’s new voter suppression law that would disenfranchise more than 300,000 voters, mostly African American, young people and seniors.

In a press conference, Attorney General Eric Holder said the law passed by the Republican-majority legislature and signed by Gov. Pat McCrory (R-N.C.) in August was a deliberate attempt to exclude voters of color.  

The Justice Department expects to show that the clear and intended effects of these changes would contract the electorate and result in unequal access to participation in the political process on account of race.

The suit challenges four parts of the law that curtail early voting—a common and popular method of voting in African American churches—end same day registration, ban the counting of certain provisional ballots and require the most restrictive voter ID law in the nation, with just a handful of acceptable forms of identification. Student ID cards from state colleges and universities, along with local government and private employer ID cards, would not be valid forms of identification.

Holder said more than 70% of the votes cast by African Americans in North Carolina in the 2008 and 2012 elections were cast during the early-voting period. He also disputed claims by the law’s supporters that the voter ID requirements were made necessary because of voter fraud.

The proof of that is simply not there. All the studies I have seen, that are reputable, indicate this concern about vote fraud is something that is made up.

MaryBe McMillan, secretary-treasurer of North Carolina State AFL-CIO, said:

The purpose of this law is to make it harder for the elderly, students and people of color to vote. Those are the groups who tend to vote early and who disproportionately don’t have an ID. Right-wing legislators created this law because they want to disenfranchise certain groups of citizens. This law is an attack on our rights and our democracy, and I am confident that the court will agree that this law is “willfully discriminatory” and it must be struck down.

These election law changes would have been subject to pre-clearance under the Voting Rights Act, but the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision that gutted a key provision of the act removed North Carolina, along with other southern states, from federal review until a new formula is created by Congress.

The overturned provision was Section 4 of the act, which provided the jurisdictional coverage formula that identified all or parts of 16 states with long histories of voter discrimination. Section 5 of the act required those jurisdictions to receive approval from the Justice Department for any changes they make to voting rights. Sections 4 and 5 were part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and, in 2006, were reauthorized with overwhelming bipartisan support: 98–0 in the Senate and 390–33 in the House.