Voters still will need to show identification at the polls under the decision by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, according to attorneys who challenged the law, but a lower court also will have to devise a way for Texas to accommodate those who can not.
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“Today’s ruling by the Fifth Circuit confirms what we have long known to be true-Texas’s voter ID law, one of the most restrictive barriers to the ballot box in the nation, has a discriminatory effect on minority voters and violates the Voting Rights Act”, Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement issued after the ruling.
The ruling came on the day of the deadline set by the U.S. Supreme Court for the 5th Circuit to issue its decision on the appeal presented by Texas after the measure had been rejected by a federal district court.
Governor Greg Abbott said, “The 5th Circuit rightly reversed the lower court’s finding of discriminatory goal, but wrongly concluded the law had a discriminatory effect”.
The reports state that if the court had found that there was in fact a discriminatory goal in the passing of their voter ID law, they would have forced judicial oversight of any changes to the election rules.
The Obama Administration’s Department of Justice traveled to Texas to argue the case, and hailed it as a victory for minority voters in Texas.
That included people like Floyd Carrier, an 83-year-old African-American man who was turned away at the polls despite having a veteran’s card, voter registration card and an expired driver’s license.
Most cases in the federal appeals courts are heard by three-judge panels.
The stringent Voter ID law passed in 2011 has proven to be an enormous barrier to democracy for Texas’ most vulnerable communities, including college students, the working poor, and the elderly.
The ruling comes after a 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby County vs. Holder, in which the high court gutted a key section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Texas enacted the voter ID law in 2011 which required voters to have photo ID when voting.
If citizens do not have to prove they are citizens to vote – if election officials at polling stations are apparently to take one’s profession of citizenship at one’s word, then anyone can vote. Judges of both parties have now spoken in four different forums so we hope that the Attorney General recognizes the obvious: “that this is a discriminatory law, and stops trying to enforce this law”. Imagine that the trial court found bad intent from two baskets of evidence, Basket A and Basket B. Counting noses, a majority of 5 Circuit judges believed that the trial court’s analysis went too far in inferring discriminatory intent in considering what was in Basket A, such as statements by the law’s opponents in the state Legislature as to the intent of the legislators who passed the bills.
Although the court found some of the arguments made in previous court cases to be legitimate, “there remains evidence to support a finding that the cloak of ballot integrity could be hiding a more invidious objective”, Haynes wrote.
In a concurrence, Circuit Judges Stephen Higginson and Gregg Costa said Texas’ voter ID “abridges minorities’ ability to participate equally in the political process”.
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But any have also challenged some Democrats’ assertions that voter ID laws are discriminatory. “I am thrilled the court declared the right to vote shall not be infringed”. Earlier this week, a federal judge blocked a similar law in Wisconsin, saying that it would still be unduly hard for many voters to acquire the state’s free voter identification card. Experts called it unlikely that the court would throw out the law completely. Election integrity policies alone do not prevent against voter fraud and irregularity.
