Supreme Court rules NH can block voters from using student IDs

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled New Hampshire’s top election official can fully stop voters from using their student IDs when showing up to the polls in the midterms — a request backed by the Republican National Committee (RNC).

A lower judge ruled officials had improperly gone further than a new state law placing restrictions on student IDs to get a ballot.

The judge said the state still needed to consider student IDs alongside other evidence when a voter lacks other ways to prove their identity.

The Supreme Court chastised the judge for intervening too close to November’s contests.

“New Hampshire has a responsibility to protect the integrity of its elections and ensure that election laws are applied as written,” New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella (R) said in a statement. “The Supreme Court’s decision is an important victory for our efforts to defend those laws and prevent last-minute court orders from creating uncertainty for voters and election officials. We will continue to defend New Hampshire’s election laws and the safeguards they provide.”

The high court has said such orders can cause voter confusion, known as the Purcell principle. The opinion points to the recent legal whiplash over Missouri’s redistricting as one recent example.

“Here, the District Court did not point to anything that would justify deviating from that principle,” the majority wrote in its unsigned, one-paragraph opinion.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson publicly dissented, saying the rule didn’t apply since the judge in New Hampshire was helping ensure the public received accurate information.

“When a federal court determines that material misrepresentations are being made about a State’s election rules, an injunction to prohibit that conduct does not contribute to public confusion, it prevents that very problem,” Jackson wrote.

It is not a final ruling in the litigation, and it could return to the Supreme Court after the midterms.

New Hampshire’s Senate race has emerged as a key state to watch in the battle for control of the upper chamber in November’s midterms, as Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas faces off against former Republican Sen. John Sununu to succeed the retiring Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D).

New Hampshire’s emergency request to enforce its student ID guidance got the support of the RNC. It placed the blame on the plaintiffs, the Coalition for Open Democracy, saying they had delayed the proceedings.

“Months passed, and election season began, in the time that the Coalition waited,” the RNC’s lawyers wrote to the Supreme Court.