By Ken Otterbourg
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge began hearing a challenge to North Carolina's election laws on Monday that claims Republican-backed voting restrictions discriminate against black and Latino voters who tend to favor Democrats.
Voting rights groups, backed by the U.S. Department of Justice, say that changes to election laws by the Republican-led state legislature in 2013 were unlawful. Republicans say the changes treat all voters equally and were designed to prevent voter fraud.
"The outcome of this historic case in North Carolina will have an impact on voting rights across the nation," according to North Carolina's National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which held a rally Monday morning and was organizing a march in Winston-Salem on Monday afternoon.
The case is being brought by the NAACP, the League of Women Voters and the Department of Justice against North Carolina Governor Patrick McCrory and the state board of elections.
The election law changes in 2013 reduced the early-voting period, eliminated pre-registration for 16 and 17 year olds, and barred same-day registration and provisional voting for voters casting ballots outside their normal precincts.
It also requires voters to show certain forms of photo identification to cast a ballot, although that provision isn't the subject of this litigation.
The NAACP noted that African Americans comprise 22 percent of North Carolina voters but made up 41 percent of voters who used same-day registration. They also cast out-of-precinct ballots at twice the rate of white voters.
"This is our Selma," the NAACP said in a web posting announcing Monday's march, referring to the famous attack on civil rights marchers in Alabama in March 1965, five months before the Voting Rights Act became law.
Attorneys for the defendants rejected that idea.
"We've heard that this is another Selma," said Thomas Farr, an attorney representing the state. "What's the dastardly thing that North Carolina has done? What they did was they enacted regulations that represent majority rule throughout the United States."
North Carolina's changes to its election laws came after a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2013 eliminated a key portion of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that banned voter discrimination.
The Supreme Court ruling ended a requirement that North Carolina, along with other states with histories of discrimination, obtain federal approval for voting rule changes affecting minorities.
Court challenges have also been mounted recently in Texas and Florida over similar Republican-led voting restrictions.