The Supreme Court has refused to block a Texas voter identification law for the November election – the first time in decades that the justices have allowed such a law to stand after a lower federal court had deemed it restrictive and unconstitutional.
The ruling came just after 5 a.m. on Saturday. Three justices dissented.
The Associated Press writes:
"The law was struck down by a federal judge last week, but a federal appeals court had put that ruling on hold. The judge found that roughly 600,000 voters, many of them black or Latino, could be turned away at the polls because they lack acceptable identification. Early voting in Texas begins Monday."
Lyle Denniston of Scotus Blog calls the decision "a stinging defeat for the Obama administration and a number of civil rights groups."
Denniston says: "The Justice Department has indicated that the case is likely to return to the Supreme Court after the appeals court rules. Neither the Fifth Circuit Court's action so far nor the Supreme Court's Saturday order dealt with the issue of the law's constitutionality. The ultimate validity of the law, described by Saturday's dissenters as 'the strictest regime in the country,' probably depends upon Supreme Court review."
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented.
"The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law, one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters," Ginsburg wrote in the dissent.
The AP says of the Texas law that it "sets out seven forms of approved ID - a list that includes concealed handgun licenses but not college student IDs, which are accepted in other states with similar measures."
Earlier this month, the high court put on hold a similar law in Wisconsin.
The U.S. District Court that ruled the law unconstitutional and compared it to a poll tax in finding that purposely discriminated against minority voters.
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