Supreme Court Lets New Hampshire Bar Student IDs for Voting

WASHINGTON. The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed New Hampshire to fully enforce a state ban on voters using student IDs to prove their identity at the polls, handing Secretary of State David Scanlan and the Republican National Committee a win less than two weeks before the November election.

The unsigned order pauses a federal district court ruling from Oct. 2. That ruling had said a poll worker could still consider a student ID, case by case, when a voter without an approved government issued ID tried to prove identity through other evidence. The Supreme Court said lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter election rules on the eve of an election, a rule known as the Purcell principle, and said the district court had pointed to nothing that justified departing from it.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. She wrote that the district court order did not change state law. In her view, it only required officials to give the public accurate information about what the law allows, and she said she would not disturb such an order even, and perhaps especially, when an election is looming.

How the dispute built

The fight starts with House Bill 323, a Republican backed law signed by Gov. Kelly Ayotte in April. The law removed student IDs from the list of identification voters can use to obtain a ballot. Scanlan then told election officials not to consider student IDs at all, even under a separate safety valve provision that lets a voter without qualifying photo identification establish identity through other evidence.

The Coalition for Open Democracy, a voting rights group, sued in August. It challenged the change as discrimination against younger voters and as an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote. It also argued that officials had not identified any security concern specific to student ID cards.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante declined to block the underlying student ID ban while the case is litigated. But he ruled that Scanlan had gone too far by barring officials from considering a student ID as other evidence of identity, and he blocked enforcement of that broader interpretation on Oct. 2. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals left that protection in place last week. The judge also found that the change had already kept one student from voting and could affect more voters.

Scanlan asked the Supreme Court to intervene, saying the Oct. 2 order injected uncertainty into state voting procedures less than three weeks before the election. Thursday's stay means his broader directive takes effect while the appeal goes forward.

Why New Hampshire draws national attention

New Hampshire voters will fill an open U.S. Senate seat in November, replacing retiring Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. That race will help decide whether Republicans keep control of the Senate. A recent CNN poll found Democrats hold a 31 percentage point advantage over Republicans among younger adults, which helps explain the scrutiny of rules affecting student voters.

For New Hampshire voters, the point is immediate. A student ID on its own will not verify identity at the polls, and poll workers will not consider one as supporting evidence either, under the order now in place.