Still the only voter ID anyone should need
Texas’ new voter identification law fully absolves the state from discriminating against minority voters in 2011, and courts should not take further action in a battle over the state’s old voter ID law, President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice argued in a legal filing Wednesday.
“Texas’s voter ID law both guarantees to Texas voters the opportunity to cast an in-person ballot and protects the integrity of Texas’s elections,” the filing stated.
Federal lawyers were referring to Senate Bill 5, which Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law last month. It would soften a 2011 voter ID law — known as the nation’s most stringent — that courts have ruled purposefully burdened Latino and black voters. If allowed to take effect, the law would allow people without photo ID to vote if they present alternate forms of ID and sign affidavits swearing a “reasonable impediment” kept them from obtaining what was otherwise required.
“S.B. 5 addresses the impact that the Court found in [the previous law] by dramatically reducing the number of voters who lack acceptable photographic identification,” the justice department argued, adding that U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos should “decline any further remedies.”
The filing came as Ramos is weighing whether SB 5 fixes legislative discrimination she and other courts have identified, and it highlighted Trump’s dramatic departure from his predecessor on voting rights issues.
Former President Obama’s Justice Department originally teamed up with civil rights groups against Texas throughout the long-winding legal battle over the ID law, known as Senate Bill 14. The civil rights groups argue SB 5 neither absolves lawmakers from intentionally discriminating against minority voters by passing the 2011 law, nor would it properly accommodate those voters going forward.
Chad Dunn, a lawyer representing some of the challengers, said the reversal shows the Justice Department “simply has no more credibility in this litigation.”
See here and here for some background. Both sides will get to respond to the others’ briefs by July 17, and we ought to have a decision by August 10. I continue to be puzzled as to how anything the Legislature does now can undo its discriminatory intent from 2011. Undo the effects sure, though I don’t think they’ve truly done that either, but not the intent. There needs to be some redress for that, and the best way to accomplish that is to throw the law out entirely. If there are no consequences for bad acts, there is no incentive to not commit them. The Lone Star Project, the Current, and Rick Hasen have more.