A federal appeals panel ruled Wednesday that a strict voter identification law in Texas discriminated against blacks and Hispanics and violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – a decision that election experts called an important step toward defining the reach of the landmark law.
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The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that the law made voting more hard for some minority groups and ruled the law violated the Voting Rights Act. Fortunately, those changes have been met with a spirited legal challenge from voting rights advocates and the U.S. Department of Justice.
“Typically voter ID laws have a disproportionate impact on lower income people, minority folks and elderly folks”, said Elfant. Its ruling followed a decision last year by the lower, Corpus-Christi-based U.S. District Court that likened the law to an unconstitutional “poll tax” that could require some poor Texans to pay to vote because of fees associated with obtaining necessary IDs. “The Republican voter ID law is discriminatory”, Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement.
An election official checks a voter’s photo identification at an early voting polling site in Austin, Texas.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the fight is far from settled.
Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton did not immediately comment on the ruling.
NPR’s John Burnett reported in Wednesday’s newscast that the Justice Department had argued that tens of thousands of minority voters would be prevented from casting ballots because they lacked one of seven types of approved ID card. After leaving the White House, King said, “We’ve got to get this president some power”, Young recalled, laughing.
Free voting IDs are available from the state, but opponents have said getting those cards still put underlying financial costs on voters, such as paying for birth certificate copies and travel.
The New Orleans panel sustained the lower court’s ruling that the law interacts with “social and historical conditions in Texas to cause an inequality in the electoral opportunities enjoyed by African-Americans and Hispanic voters”.
The 2011 law, considered one of the toughest in the country, was in effect during the midterm elections previous year. The appeals court returned the case to the district judge to…
The state could ask that the 5th Circuit rehear the case “en banc”, which means with the entire court present as opposed to a three-judge panel.
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“It does show the continuing relevance of the Voting Rights Act even in its weakened form”, said Weiser, whose organization helped represent some of the plaintiffs in the suit.
