(AP) — North Carolina judges struck down the state’s latest photo voter identification law on Friday, agreeing with minority voters that Republicans rammed through rules tainted by racial bias as a way to remain in power.

Two of the three trial judges declared the December 2018 law is unconstitutional, even though it was designed to implement a photo voter ID mandate added to the North Carolina Constitution in a referendum just weeks earlier.

With a similar lawsuit in federal court set to go to trial this January and another state court lawsuit now on appeal, it’s looking more unlikely that a voter ID mandate for in-person and absentee balloting will happen in the 2022 elections.

In July, 2016, a federal appeals court struck down several portions of a 2013 North Carolina elections law that included a voter ID mandate, saying GOP lawmakers had written them with “almost surgical precision” to discourage voting by Black voters, who tend to support Democrats.

Lawyers for the voters who sued over the 2018 law said it suffered the same racial defects as the 2013 law — following a long effort by North Carolina elected officials to weaken African American voting as a way to retain control of the General Assembly.

About three dozen states have laws requesting or requiring voters to show some form of identification at the polls, and about half of these states want photo ID only, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The plaintiffs’ case emphasized analysis from a University of Michigan professor who said Black voters are 39% more likely to lack a qualifying photo ID than white registered voters.