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A judge last week overturned a portion of a North Carolina law regulating abortion pill distribution in the state. U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles gave a partial victory to Dr. Amy Brant, the abortionist who had sued the state, and who argued that its regulations go above and beyond the guidance of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In her ruling, Eagles overturned the portion of the law mandating that mifepristone be prescribed only by doctors and only in person, as well as a requirement that patients have an in-person follow-up appointment. Eagles allowed other portions of the law to...

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A federal lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s photo voter identification law is set to go to trial Monday, with arguments expected to focus on whether the requirement unlawfully discriminates against Black and Hispanic citizens or serves legitimate state interests to boost public confidence in elections. The non-jury trial in Winston-Salem begins more than five years after the state NAACP and several local chapters sued over the voter ID law enacted by the Republican-dominated General Assembly in late 2018. This litigation, along with similar lawsuits in state courts, delayed implementation of the requirement until last year’s municipal elections....

In 2014, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) filed suit against the University of North Carolina. Its complaint argued that the university had engaged in intentional discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity to the detriment of SFFA members. The suit followed in a line of cases challenging the admissions policies of universities, where students from certain groups were given preferences over students who were not in those groups. In a pair of 2003 cases involving the University of Michigan, the Supreme Court ruled that universities were in violation of the law if they used a rigid quota system (Gratz...

A federal judge endorsed the University of North Carolina’s (UNC) use of race as a factor in screening applicants after ruling that the university did not discriminate against white and Asian American applicants.No discrimination: Judge Loretta Biggs ruled on Monday that the UNC’s undergraduate admissions process had not been discriminatory toward specific race groups, reported CNN.The group Students for Fair Admissions alleged in its 2014 lawsuit that UNC deliberately discriminated against certain members by including race in its admissions process.According to the suit, UNC allegedly used “racial preferences in undergraduate admissions where there are available race-neutral alternatives capable of achieving...

A federal judge ruled that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill can continue to use race-based admission practices, saying the school's policy did not discriminate against white and Asian American applicants. "Seventy years after the first Black students were admitted to U.N.C., the minority students at the university still report being confronted with racial epithets, as well as feeling isolated, ostracized, stereotyped and viewed as tokens," wrote U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs in a 161-page ruling Monday. "As a whole, underrepresented minorities are admitted at lower rates than their white and Asian American counterparts." The lawsuit brought by...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that absentee ballots in the presidential battleground state of North Carolina must have a witness signature, a boost for Republican groups seeking to enforce stricter rules on mail-in voting. U.S. District Judge William Osteen in Greensboro issued an injunction essentially barring voters from being able to “fix” an absentee ballot they had already sent in if it lacked a third-party signature attesting that the voter, and not somebody else, signed the ballot. The judge was reversing a previous directive by state officials that had allowed voters to remedy the lack...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that absentee ballots in the presidential battleground state of North Carolina must have a witness signature, a boost for Republican groups seeking to enforce stricter rules on mail-in voting. U.S. District Judge William Osteen in Greensboro issued an injunction essentially barring voters from being able to “fix” an absentee ballot they had already sent in if it lacked a third-party signature attesting that the voter, and not somebody else, signed the ballot. The judge was reversing a previous directive by state officials that had allowed voters to remedy the lack...

Raleigh, N.C. – A federal judge granted a temporary restraining order Saturday against North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein’s secretive absentee ballot scheme struck with Gov. Roy Cooper’s Board of Elections and his former campaign attorney, in a case in which state House Speaker Tim Moore (R-Cleveland) is the lead plaintiff. In a ruling siding with voters and state lawmakers while transferring their case to other litigation, U.S. District Court Judge James Dever said the plaintiffs’ motion for a temporary restraining order is “in the public interest.” “The NCSBOE inequitably and materially upset the electoral status quo in the middle...