A federal appeals court ruled that Texas’ strict voter ID law discriminates against minorities and the poor, and must be revised before November’s elections.
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Voters will still 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 will now also have to devise a way for Texas to accommodate those who can not.
The reports state that if the court had found that there was in fact a discriminatory objective in the passing of their voter ID law, they would have forced judicial oversight of any changes to the election rules. Because of that, the Supreme Court had invited voting rights advocates to seek a delay in the photo ID requirement if the appeals court had not ruled by Wednesday. It ordered a lower court to determine ways Texas can fix the law prior to the presidential election this fall.
“The district court’s immediate responsibility is to ensure the implementation of an interim remedy for SB 14’s discriminatory effect that disrupts voter identification rules for the 2016 election season as little as possible, yet eliminates the [Voting Rights Act] Section 2 discriminatory effect violation”.
In the meantime, the ruling is a win for the President Barack Obama’s administration, which used the U.S. Justice Department to challenge Texas’ law as a way to fight ballot-box restrictions passed by conservative statehouses nationwide. If the district court finds this is the case, Texas could be forced to submit any voting-law changes to the federal government for approval – as it previously did under a provision of the Voting Rights Act.
DeBeauvoir said that the current Texas law, enacted in 2011, offered strict ID requirements for voters.
“We have repeatedly proven – using hard facts – that the Texas voter ID law discriminates against minority voters”. But the Fifth Circuit’s ruling tilts the odds of success before the shorthanded court against the state: A 4-4 split among the justices would uphold the lower court’s decision in favor of the plaintiffs. States are permitted to prevent voter fraud, Haynes concludes-but they do not get “a free pass to enact needlessly burdensome laws with impermissible racially discriminatory impacts”.
While DeBeauvoir said it’s unknown how the trial court will approach this ruling, she said something will have to change and that it needs to change quickly. But the ruling did not strike down the law entirely, ruling instead that new procedures must be found to assist potential voters lacking the required identification.
State Representative Dustin Burrows (R- Lubbock) said concerning the ruling, “Our Republic is built upon the integrity of our elections; and, unfortunately, today’s decision takes away part of Texas’ ability to protect against fraud”.
A federal judge in Wisconsin on Tuesday softened that state’s law, saying people without a photo ID should be able to vote in November if they agree to sign an affidavit explaining why they could not obtain identification. The state and other supporters say the Texas law prevents fraud, while opponents say there are few cases of voter fraud. But a tie would simply affirm the Fifth Circuit’s decision-meaning Wednesday’s decision may well be the death knell of SB 14.
The law’s path through the courts has been winding.
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Texas doesn’t recognize university IDs from college students as one of the seven forms of acceptable ID, but does accept concealed handgun licenses as proof of identity.
