Boom.
Still the only voter ID anyone should need
Less than two weeks before the start of early voting, a federal judge ruled the state’s photo voter ID law unconstitutional late Thursday and ordered state officials to drop the new requirements.
“The Court holds that SB 14 creates an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote, has an impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African-Americans, and was imposed with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose,” U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of Corpus Christi wrote in a 147-page opinion. “The Court further holds that SB 14 constitutes an unconstitutional poll tax.”
A spokeswoman for Attorney General Greg Abbott said the state would immediately file an appeal to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
“The State of Texas will immediately appeal and will urge the Fifth Circuit to resolve this matter quickly to avoid voter confusion in the upcoming election,” Lauren Bean said in an emailed statement. “The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that voter ID laws are constitutional so we are confident the Texas law will be upheld on appeal.”
[…]
The judge heard three weeks of evidence in September and issued her opinion on the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court stopped immediate implementation of a similar law in Wisconsin.
It was not immediately clear what will happen to this year’s general election. The judge said she would schedule a conference with the lawyers to discuss it, and a successful appeal by Abbott, who is also the Republican nominee for governor, could put the law back into effect for this election while the courts sort out a full appeal.
Here’s more on the Wisconsin voter ID ruling. There are two things to emphasize here. One is that in addition to striking down the law, Judge Ramos found intentional discrimination on the part of the state in passing the law. That potentially allows for Texas to be bailed back in to preclearance under Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act, which is something the Justice Department specifically sought. The other is that there’s a good chance that Judge Ramos’ ruling could be stayed, allowing voter ID to be implemented for this election while the appeals go forward. Rick Hasen explains.
In Ohio, the court changed the law close to the election, but more importantly, it imposed an order reestablishing 5 weeks of early voting when the state was still willing to give four. There was no significant burden on plaintiffs and so the lower courts were wrong to order this emergency relief. In North Carolina, North Carolina’s law, which I’ve dubbed the strict set of voting restrictions we’ve seen enacted as a package since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, should be found unconstitutional. But even so, under the Purcell v. Gonzalez principle, it was wrong for the 4th Circuit to make this change in the rules so close to the election (particularly where plaintiffs waited a while to seek a preliminary injunction [this has been corrected]).
That same Purcell principle applies even more strongly to Wisconsin. That is, even if the Supreme Court ultimately would say that Wisconsin’s law is constitutional and does not violate the Voting Rights Act, this is a very strong case under Purcell. (As I explained, the key question is whether Wisconsin has a strong enough state interest in its sovereignty over elections to implement a voter id law very quickly before the election, when there has been no preparation and when the undisputed evidence shows that, by the state’s own account, up to 10 percent of the state’s voters could be disenfranchised (a position the 7th Circuit en banc dissenters called shocking).
Finally, what happens now with Texas, with the huge win for challengers to Texas’s voter id law which Justin wrote about earlier? It is 4 am where I am and I may have missed it, but in all of the court’s findings—the Texas law violates the Equal Protection clause, is a poll tax, violates the Voting Rights Act, and engaged in enough intentional discrimination to be put back under preclearance–there is no discussion of whether the actual order will apply to this election and the injunction will stop its use in this election.
This order too creates a huge Purcell problem, as I’ve blogged, changing the rules so close to the election. If the district court orders an immediate stop to Texas’s id law, I expect the 5th Circuit (if not the Supreme Court) to reverse that on Purcell grounds.
He’s the expert, but I would argue that the default for the vast majority of voters has been not needing to show ID, and that it would be less disruptive to enjoin the law pending appeals. The Texas Election Law Blog, going by an earlier Justin Levitt post, thinks Judge Ramos’ decision was written to address the Purcell issue. I hope they’re right, but as always with matters involving the Fifth Circuit, I have no faith in their jurisprudence. A press release from the Brennan Center is here, the Chron story is here, and BOR, Burka, Newsdesk, and PDiddie have more.