Gov. Roy Cooper and N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein said Tuesday they will no longer appeal a federal court ruling that struck down North Carolina’s sweeping and controversial elections law.

Cooper and Stein said in a news release they were taking steps to withdraw a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court. Former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory late last year joined in a petition asking the high court to hear the case. On Tuesday, the governor’s general counsel and chief deputy attorney general sent a letter ending outside council in the case on behalf of the state, the Governor’s Office said.

The Republican-led State Board of Elections, its individual members and its executive director will remain part of the case, the Governor’s Office said. But Patrick Gannon, spokesman for the State Board of Elections, said Tuesday no decision has been made. The board will meet today and will likely take up the issue.

“We need to make it easier for people to exercise their right to vote, not harder, and I will not continue to waste time and money appealing this unconstitutional law,” Cooper said in a statement. “It’s time for North Carolina to stop fighting this unfair, unconstitutional law and work instead to improve equal access for voters.”

House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate Leader Phil Berger blasted Cooper and Stein in a joint statement.

“Roy Cooper’s and Josh Stein’s desperate and politically motivated stunt to derail North Carolina’s voter ID law is not only illegal, it also raises serious questions about whether they’ve allowed their own personal and political prejudices and conflicts of interest to cloud their professional judgment,” the Republicans said.

In July, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the law, known as the Voter Information Verification Act. The law’s most well-known provision required voters to have a photo ID when casting a ballot.

The law also reduced the days of early voting, eliminated same-day voter registration and prohibited county elections officials from counting out-of-precinct ballots — all voting practices used disproportionately by black residents.

The court ruled that the voting restrictions “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.”

The ruling meant that the controversial law was not in effect for last year’s presidential elections.

Two trials on the state’s elections law were held in U.S. District Court in Winston-Salem in July 2015 and January 2016. U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder upheld the law. Plaintiffs, including the U.S. Department of Justice and the N.C. NAACP, appealed the ruling to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Republican legislators pushed through the law in three days in July 2013, a month after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision invalidating a key section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Section 5 required states and communities that had a history of racial discrimination to seek federal approval, known as pre-clearance, before making changes to their election laws. Forty counties in North Carolina were under the requirement.

Republican legislators argued that the law was necessary to ensure the integrity of the elections system and to guard against potential voter fraud. In-person voter fraud, however, is rare, according to elections experts and statistics from the State Board of Elections.

Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy North Carolina, applauded the decision and said that in raw numbers, the law actually hurt more white voters, including those who backed Republican legislators who backed it.

“For example, research by Democracy North Carolina shows that only one in three (35 percent) of the voters using same-day registration in 2016 were Democrats,” Hall said in a statement. “Most were white Republicans and unaffiliated voters, and our research indicates that most of them supported Donald Trump and other Republican candidates.”

Stein echoed Cooper’s sentiments regarding the case.

“I support efforts to guarantee fair and honest elections, but those efforts should not be used as an excuse to make it harder for people to vote.”