The Supreme Court has struck down a temporary injunction barring Texas from enacting one of the strictest voting ID laws in the country. The New York Times reports that new ruling will allow the state to enforce the law in the upcoming election.
In 2011, a law was enacted in Texas demanding that voters present photo ID. At first, the law was blocked under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires approval from the Federal government before any changes to voting law. The Supreme Court struck down Section 5 in 2013.
After that, Texas officials began to enforce the ID legislation.
In September, a federal judge struck down the law, on the basis that it placed “an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote.” Texas appealed, and the case went to the Supreme court.
Dissenting, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued a six-page brief alleging that the decision “risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.”
“A sharply disproportionate percentage of those voters are African-American or Hispanic,” Ginsburg continued, “racial discrimination in elections in Texas is no mere historical artifact.”
Joined in dissent by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, she added that law “replaced the previously existing voter identification requirements with the strictest regime in the country.” Ginsburg argues that the law would place a heavy burden on low-income and minority voters, who tend to vote Democratic.
Since acquiring a government issued ID requires a certified birth certificate, which costs money, Ginsburg argued that this law amounts to a poll tax, which, she explained, is “at odds with this court’s precedent.”
This marks a sad day for Americans’ rights to free and fair elections, and indicates a larger trend of states trying to curtail minority voters during an important election cycle.
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