COLUMBIA, S.C. (WACH/AP) -- South Carolina's top prosecutor says the U.S. Justice Department was wrong to block South Carolina from requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification to vote.
Attorney General Alan Wilson asks a judge to overturn the decision by the federal government in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
The Justice Department in December rejected South Carolina's law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. The agency said the law didn't meet the burden under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which outlawed discriminatory practices preventing blacks from voting and requires South Carolina to get federal permission for every change to state election laws.
"The DOJ has denied citizens in South Carolina protection of a law that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in Indiana, and the DOJ itself pre-cleared for Georgia," said Wilson in a statement released by his office. "Nothing in this law prevents anyone from voting if they cannot immediately show a valid photo identification."
South Carolina's was the first voter ID law to be refused by the federal agency in nearly 20 years.
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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