Supreme Court Lets New Hampshire Ban Student IDs for Voting
The unsigned order, handed down Thursday, blocked a lower court ruling that would have let students use campus IDs at the polls less than two weeks before the midterms.
The Supreme Court cleared the way Thursday for New Hampshire to fully ban the use of student IDs for voting in the midterm elections.
The justices granted a Republican-backed emergency appeal and blocked a lower court ruling that would have let students use campus IDs as a backup way to prove their identity at the polls. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to publicly dissent. The order was unsigned and gave no vote count.
The majority cited a long-standing principle: federal courts should not change voting rules close to an election. “This Court has repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election,” the majority wrote. “Here, the District Court did not point to anything that would justify deviating from that principle.” Jackson questioned whether that principle applied in this case.
New Hampshire passed House Bill 323 this spring, removing student IDs from the list of identifications voters can use to obtain a ballot. Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, signed it in April.
Secretary of State David Scanlan went a step further. He issued guidance barring student IDs even as a backup — under a state provision that lets voters prove their identity through “any other evidence that reasonably establishes” who they are.
The Coalition for Open Democracy, a pro-voting group, sued in August. U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante left the underlying law in place but blocked Scanlan’s guidance on Oct. 2. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to intervene. Scanlan then asked the Supreme Court to step in, arguing the Oct. 2 order injected uncertainty into voting procedures less than three weeks before the election and misread state law. The Republican National Committee backed the appeal.
The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Donald McFarlane, said colleges don’t have the same controls as government agencies when issuing student cards. “Today’s Supreme Court decision is a victory for common sense,” he said in an email. “It allows HB 323 to work as intended: strengthening voter identity verification, applying a consistent standard, and maintaining public confidence in New Hampshire elections.”
The Coalition for Open Democracy argued state officials never identified “any security or integrity concerns specific to student ID cards and why they are unique among other non-governmental forms of identification” that poll workers may still accept case by case.
The stakes in November
The ruling comes less than two weeks before New Hampshire voters fill an open U.S. Senate seat — one of the contests that will decide which party controls the chamber. Recent polls show Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas ahead of Republican former Sen. John Sununu. A recent CNN poll found Democrats hold a 31-point advantage over Republicans among younger adults.
