From Texas Redistricting has week:
Still the only voter ID anyone should need
The State of Texas filed a motion this afternoon asking Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos to dismiss pending voter ID suits on several grounds.
First, the motion argued that elected officials like Congressman Marc Veasey, governmental bodies like Dallas County, and community groups like the Texas League of Young Voters “lack [legal] standing to assert the third-party rights of voters.”
The motion said that under case law on standing, a “plaintiff cannot sue to vindicate the right of third parties unless he clearly alleges and demonstrates that the third-party rights-holders face a ‘hinderance’ to protecting their own rights.” In this case, the motion argued that “[a]ny voter who suffers injury in fact as a result of Senate Bill 14 can sue to challenge it, and there is no shortage of capable and highly motivated attorneys willing to provide representation free of charge.”
The motion also argued that three of the individual plaintiffs had failed to assert an injury sufficient to create standing to sue under Article III of the Constitution.
The motion said that the state’s voter ID allows people to vote as long as the name on their ID is “substantially similar” to the name on voter rolls and that the three plaintiffs had failed to “plead facts showing that the names on their photo identification and voter-registration certificate are not ‘substantially similar’ under the standards established by the Secretary of State.”
The motion also broadly challenged the substantive merits of the suits, telling the court that each of the plaintiffs – including the Justice Department – had failed to state a claim on which relief can be granted.
See here for more on “substantially similar” and here for the calendar in the case. I’m not a lawyer, but I suspect this is just the state doing what civil defendants usually do, which is try to avoid having to defend themselves at all. We’ll see what the responses from the plaintiffs look like.