Texas can enforce its voter identification law for the upcoming midterm elections, the U.S. Supreme Court said. In an order issued Oct. 18, the Court denied emergency requests to allow immediate implementation of the District Court’s final judgment invalidating the law. The requests came from the Obama Administration and other challengers who claim Texas’ law will harm minority voting rights.
The Court did not decide on the legality of the law, and only considered whether the law could be applied while Texas appealed the initial trial court decision. Whether the law ultimately stands on the merits remains to be seen, but its effects may be clear in the aftermath of the midterm vote, and it continues a trend begun last year in Shelby County v. Holder, where the Court overturned a key provision of the Voting Rights Act and opened the door to the wave of voter ID laws we have seen since the decision. That ruling placed the burden of identifying discriminatory practices and enforcement of the Voting Rights Act on the Justice Department, but the Court’s recent actions suggest a willingness to allow states to limit access to the ballot box and more closely control who can vote.
The order was in response to Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos’ striking down the law after a nine-day trial, ruling that it was enacted with discriminatory intent. Ramos, who sits in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, declared the Texas law the strictest in the country, as it includes the fewest forms of acceptable photo identification and does not make certain common accommodations for the poor and the elderly. On appeal, the Fifth Circuit held that Texas could temporarily use the voter ID law for this election because the state had already begun training poll workers to apply the law and it was too late to change the rules so close to the start of early voting, which began Oct. 20. The Fifth Circuit relied on recent Supreme Court emergency actions where the justices blocked late changes to state election procedures in Ohio and North Carolina, apparently reasoning that the changes might cause voter confusion.
The law requires voters to show a state-issued driver’s license, personal ID card, a concealed handgun license, a U.S. citizenship certificate, military ID card or passport to vote. Civil rights advocates and the Department of Justice estimate that more than half a million registered voters, many of them black or Hispanic, will lack the ID necessary to vote in person on Nov. 4.
The Supreme Court was reluctant to intervene so soon before the election, at the risk of undermining voter confidence in the process. The Court issued a concise order allowing Texas to enforce the law this cycle. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan voted in favor of intervening. In the dissenting opinion, Ginsburg wrote that the enforcement of a purposefully discriminatory law will undermine public confidence in elections. She also opined that the Texas law most likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.
The Supreme Court has issued four recent emergency actions in election matters, siding with the states in three of those cases. The Court allowed Ohio to limit its early voting and permitted North Carolina to prohibit same-day voter registration and out-of-precinct voting. By contrast, the Court blocked Wisconsin from enforcing its voter ID law for the midterm elections.
