WASHINGTON — In a win for Republicans less than two weeks before Election Day, the Supreme Court on Thursday said student IDs cannot be used in New Hampshire when voters seek a ballot in the November 3 midterm elections.
The justices granted an emergency request from New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan, a Republican, whose application was backed by the Republican National Committee. The order puts on hold a federal judge’s rulings that had forced the state to walk back its guidance on student IDs.
What the Supreme Court said
The brief, unsigned order leaned on a familiar principle: federal courts generally should not change election rules on the eve of 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 order said. “Here, the District Court did not point to anything that would justify deviating from that principle.”
The stay remains in place while the case moves through the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and any petition to the Supreme Court that follows.
Justice Jackson dissents alone
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to dissent.
“I would not disturb a clearly justifiable federal court order issued to ensure that the public receives accurate information about a State’s electoral processes,” she wrote.
Jackson argued the lower court had not rewritten New Hampshire’s election rules at all. Instead, she said, it issued “a targeted order, requiring only that the relevant government official conform his public statements to the letter of state law rather than summarizing what the law required in a manner that could mislead voters and local election workers.”
How the fight started
New Hampshire passed a law this year removing student IDs from the list of identification election officials accept when someone requests a ballot. A voting rights nonprofit, the Coalition for Open Democracy, challenged the law, arguing it unlawfully burdened the right to vote and discriminated against young voters.
U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante declined to block the law itself. But on October 2 he put on hold guidance from Scanlan saying student IDs could not be used for any purpose when seeking a ballot. Laplante said that guidance went further than the law, which only barred student IDs as a primary form of identification.
A separate provision of state law lets people establish their identity with other, unofficial evidence, anything that “reasonably establishes that it is more likely than not that the person is who they claim to be.” Under Laplante’s ruling, election officials could still consider a student ID as part of that backup process.
The Boston-based 1st Circuit declined to pause Laplante’s ruling, so the state went to the Supreme Court.
Both sides’ arguments
Scanlan argued the lower court’s position was too nuanced for the public to follow so close to an election. “The district court’s disagreement with the secretary’s interpretation of state law is nuanced, and the press and public could very easily misunderstand what the district court actually said,” he wrote, warning that voters could show up at the polls with only a student ID in hand.
Voting rights groups countered that there was already direct evidence the secretary’s guidance had disenfranchised voters, and that his office had shown it could quickly update guidance after the lower court ruled.
Why it matters
With Thursday’s order, student IDs are off the table in New Hampshire this November, not only as a primary ID but also as backup evidence of identity.
The stakes are high. New Hampshire’s ballot includes one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country: Republican former Sen. John E. Sununu faces Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas for the seat held by retiring Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a race that could help decide control of the Senate.
Reporting based on NBC News and Courthouse News Service coverage and the Supreme Court’s order.