THE DAILY BS: HOW MUCH CAN YOU HANDLE?
SPARE ME THE BS (I’ve got things to do).
- The Supreme Court stayed lower-court orders affecting how New Hampshire handles student IDs in the upcoming election.
- The ruling allows the state to bar student IDs as a backup identification method while litigation continues.
- Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to publish a dissent.
LAY IT ON ME (I’ve got time).
New Hampshire Republicans have won an election-law showdown at the Supreme Court — and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson isn’t convinced the justices got it right.
The Court granted a Republican-backed emergency appeal Thursday, allowing New Hampshire to fully restrict the use of student IDs as voter identification in the approaching midterms. The justices cited the longstanding concern that federal courts should avoid changing election rules immediately before voters go to the polls.
New Hampshire had enacted a law removing college-issued IDs from the list of expressly acceptable identification. The secretary of state then advised election officials not to accept them as a backup method either. A lower court left the statute in place but blocked that guidance, creating the dispute that reached the Supreme Court.
The Court stayed the lower-court orders. Jackson, the only justice to publish a dissent, argued that the intervention by the lower court was designed to correct misleading information about existing voting requirements, not impose a disruptive new election system.
The disagreement is more specific than the familiar headline shouting about ‘students banned from voting.’ Eligible students remain eligible to vote; the fight is over which identification they may use and what election officials tell them.
Republicans have argued that college IDs do not carry the same security safeguards as many government-issued documents. Voting-rights groups say the restriction creates unnecessary complications for lawful voters. The state faces a closely watched Senate election in November.
The Court did not decide every underlying question in the case, nor did its unsigned order announce a vote count. It decided what rules apply while litigation proceeds. With Election Day near, timing was half the argument — and, this time, New Hampshire’s Republican election officials prevailed.
DBS WIRE SOURCES (I’ve got all day).
- Supreme Court — Order and Jackson dissent (PDF)
- Associated Press — New Hampshire student-ID ruling
- Courthouse News — Voting ID order
