By GARY D. ROBERTSON

Associated Press

RALEIGH (AP) — North Carolina Republican legislative leaders are trying to reinstate the implementation of a voter photo identification requirement.

Attorneys for the GOP legislators have filed a motion asking trial court judges to lift an order that blocked enforcement of a 2018 law that laid out the rules for voter photo ID while a state lawsuit filed by voters goes to trial. That law came swiftly after voters added an ID requirement to the state constitution in November 2018.

Even if the motion filed Thursday is granted, a photo ID requirement for the November election still appears to be a long shot. Such a decision likely would be appealed. Two other voter ID lawsuits are pending, and a federal judge also blocked the voter ID implementation last December.

“It is past time for activist courts to stop blocking another common-sense elections policy that is required by North Carolina’s constitution and a strong majority of other states,” House Speaker Tim Moore, a defendant in the state lawsuit, said in a news release.

A three-judge state Court of Appeals panel reversed in February the Wake County court’s decision not to issue a preliminary injunction to block parts of the law. In their decision, the appellate judges pointed in part to the absence of public assistance identification cards from a list of qualifying IDs as evidence the 2018 law remained flawed by “discriminatory intent.” It was also absent from a 2013 voter ID law that a federal court ultimately struck down.

So when the General Assembly passed a law last month addressing the fall elections during the COVID-19 pandemic, legislators inserted a provision that would add public assistance cards to the qualifying list should the voter ID mandate get enforced.

Lawyers writing Thursday’s motion said the voter ID law now included nearly every legislative proposal designed to “ameliorate” portions of the reqiurement that critics argue could harm Black voters disproprtionately.

“Now that the Court of Appeals’ principal concern with (the law) has been remedied, equity demands that the preliminary injunction in this case be dissolved,” the attorneys wrote.

Some legislative Democrats have said the public-assistance ID provision is worthless, because such cards usually don’t require a photo. The broader COVID-19 absentee ballot bill containing the provision was approved overwhelmingly and signed into law by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, a photo voter ID opponent.

Thirty-five states have laws currently in force requesting or requiring some kind of identification be shown at the polls, with about half of them asking for a photo ID, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

North Carolina Republicans have pressed for photo ID for the past decade, saying it will build confidence in elections. Many legislative Democrats see the ID requirement as unnecessary or a tool for voter suppression, especially of minority residents and the poor.