Supreme Court will avoid the fight over North Carolina's voter law

Opponents of strict voter-ID laws won a closely watched, but perhaps temporary, victory Monday, as the Supreme Court declined to revive a four-year-old North Carolina measure. Rejecting an unusual plea from the North Carolina General Assembly, the court said it would not hear the North Carolina case in the term that will start in October. It leaves intact an appellate court ruling striking down the North Carolina law, though it also leaves unsettled some crucial issues that are likely to come b…
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The Supreme Court shut the door Monday on North Carolina Republicans’ effort to revive a state law that mandated voter identification and scaled back early voting, provisions that a lower court said improperly targeted minority voters. The justices left in place last summer’s ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals striking down the law’s photo ID requirement to vote in person, which the court said targeted African-Americans “with almost surgical precision.” The measure, approved in 201…
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Rhode Island lawmakers who aren’t ready to legalize marijuana might try to study it instead. The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote Tuesday on a bill that would create a legislative commission to study the effects of legalizing pot for recreational use. The 15-member commission would review how marijuana legalization has affected residents of states such as Colorado and Washington and how it’s affected fiscal conditions in those states. The group would report its recommendations bac…
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Marijuana could be grown, sold and used in New Jersey under new legislation introduced Monday in the state Senate. Democratic state Sen. Nicholas Scutari, the bill’s sponsor, said at a news conference that the measure has little chance of being enacted under Republican Gov. Chris Christie, who opposes legalization efforts. But Scutari said he’s introducing the measure now as a way to lay the groundwork for it to be enacted by the next governor. He pointed to states like Colorado that have succe…
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