Two state voter ID laws are blocked, one by SCOTUS and the other by a federal judge
The U.S. Supreme Court blocked Wisconsin’s voter ID requirement Thursday evening, a turnabout from its orders in the last two weeks allowing election laws to take effect in Ohio and North Carolina that had been challenged for their potential impact on minority voters.
The Supreme Court’s latest action came the same day that a federal judge overturned a voter ID law in Texas, report the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and SCOTUSblog.
The Supreme Court vacated an order by the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that had allowed the Wisconsin voter ID law to take effect. The 7th Circuit’s order was followed by an opinion this week upholding the Wisconsin law.
The Supreme Court order (PDF) didn’t given a reason for blocking the law, but three dissenters who would have allowed the voter ID law to take effect offered a hint. They said the Supreme Court hadn’t satisfied the standard for vacating the 7th Circuit’s order, but conceded “it is particularly troubling that absentee ballots have been sent out without any notation that proof of photo identification must be submitted.” State officials have said they wouldn’t count absentee ballots without copies of a valid ID, according to the New York Times account.
The dissenters were Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
In the Texas case, U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos said in an opinion (PDF) that the state’s voter ID law had a disproportionate impact on minority voters and amounted to an “unconstitutional poll tax.”
