A controversial voter ID law in Texas violates a section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
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Under the decision, a system must be worked out before the November 8 election for voters without a driver’s license or one of the other approved IDs to address the discriminatory effect of the requirement on minority voters, the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans said.
In its ruling, the Fifth Circuit asked a lower court judge to come up with a remedy that disrupts voter identification rules for the 2016 election season as little as possible, yet eliminates the laws discriminatory effect on minority voters. The state’s voting law requiring a government-issued form of identification to cast a ballot was ruled as discriminatory, an appeals court said.
The state has spent more than $3 million trying to defend its voter identification law. Texas argued that its stringent ID requirements, which were passed by a Republican-dominated legislature, were necessary to prevent voter fraud.
You can read the 5th Circuit’s opinion here, or below.
A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit reviewing that decision put aside the district judge’s ruling that the law was enacted by the Texas legislature with a discriminatory goal, which would have required striking down the law.
The Voting Rights Act used to require that Texas and other, mostly southern states with histories of discrimination get federal approval when redrawing electoral maps or making laws pertaining to elections. “Preventing voter fraud is essential to accurately reflecting the will of Texas voters during elections”, he said. “This is an enormous victory for voters in Texas”, said Myrna Perez, deputy director of the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program. The appeals court left it to Judge Ramos to devise the specific remedy. But the court now is split 4 to 4 on ideological grounds, and it would require the vote of five to overturn the circuit court decision.
As an example, critics of the law have pointed to the acceptability of a concealed handgun license as photo ID to vote.
The court agreed to rehear the case en banc – meaning in front of the full court – in March, adding another chapter to the law’s convoluted journey through the federal court system since it was first signed into law in 2011.
Others applauded the court’s ruling.
Now, DeBeauvoir is waiting for a lower court to decide what rules are appropriate for Texas.
The Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, said in a statement that the state had a duty to safeguard elections. It has faced numerous court battles since then. It ordered a lower court to determine ways Texas can fix the law prior to the presidential election this fall. But Haynes notes that there is virtually no evidence that voter fraud actually occursin Texas.
Texas Republicans, including Governor Greg Abbott, on Wednesday were speaking out against a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling which struck down Texas’ Voter ID law.
The decision by most of the appeals court’s judges is the fourth major court ruling in the past month involving the rights of Texas’s rapidly expanding minority population.
The court also scrutinized the way the law was defended and passed.
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Texas contended that the earlier decisions were incorrect and that challengers have not been able to prove the law has reduced turnout or participation in any of the three statewide or five local elections in which the law has been used.
