The Supreme Court said that Texas can use its voter identification law for the upcoming elections. Early voting for the November elections begins Monday. The Texas voter ID law has been bouncing around the courts–a judge struck it down last week but a federal appeals court held up that decision. The law allows Texas voters to show one of seven different types of identification, including gun licenses but not college student IDs. The federal judge who initially blocked the law estimated that it would affect 600,000 Texas voters, mostly black and Latino. The judge called the decision “an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote.”
The Supreme Court didn’t see it that way, though three justices dissented. In dissent, Justice Ginsburg wrote: “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.”
