Supreme Court lets New Hampshire fully ban student IDs for voting ahead of midterms

By Yunior Rivas

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Students cross the campus of Dartmouth College, Tuesday, March 5, 2024, in Hanover, N.H. Dartmouth basketball players voted to form a union, an unprecedented step in the continued deterioration of the NCAA's amateur business model. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

The U.S. Supreme Court Thursday granted New Hampshire Republicans’ emergency request to fully block the use of student IDs for voting ahead of the November election. The decision pauses a lower court ruling that allowed election officials to consider student identification as evidence of a voter’s identity.

The Court’s unsigned order hands New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan (R) a victory less than two weeks before Election Day and again changes the rules facing student voters after months of litigation over the state’s new ID restrictions.

“This Court has repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election,” the majority wrote. “Here, the District Court did not point to anything that would justify deviating from that principle.”

The dispute stems from House Bill 323, a GOP-backed law signed by Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) in April that removed student IDs from the list of identification voters can use to obtain a ballot. Scanlan subsequently instructed election officials not to consider student IDs even under a separate provision allowing voters without qualifying photo identification to establish their identity through other evidence.

The pro-voting Coalition for Open Democracy sued in August. 

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante declined to block the underlying student ID law but ruled that Scanlan had gone too far by categorically barring election officials from considering student IDs as other evidence of identity. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals left that protection in place last week.

Thursday’s Supreme Court order stays that relief while New Hampshire’s appeal proceeds, allowing Scanlan’s broader directive to take effect for now.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, rejecting the majority’s use of a doctrine meant to prevent last-minute election changes. She stressed that the lower court’s order did not rewrite New Hampshire law but sought to stop state officials from misleading voters about what the law permits.

“I respectfully dissent because — even, and perhaps especially, when an election is looming— I would not disturb a clearly justifiable federal-court order,” Jackson wrote, saying the order was issued “to ensure that the public receives accurate information about a State’s electoral processes.”