The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared New Hampshire to tell poll workers that a student ID counts for nothing at the polls, 12 days before the Nov. 3 election. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented alone.
The unsigned order pauses a ruling by U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante, who found on Oct. 2 that Secretary of State David Scanlan had gone further than the law itself. A measure Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed in April removed student IDs from the list of identification that voters can use to get a ballot. Scanlan’s office then issued guidance saying student IDs should not be considered at all. Laplante held that state law still lets election officials weigh “any other evidence” of identity, and ordered the guidance corrected. The voting rights group Coalition for Open Democracy brought the challenge.
The majority did not argue the point. It cited the rule that courts should stay out of elections close to the vote: “This court has repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election.” It added that the district court “did not point to anything that would justify deviating from that principle.”
Jackson, the only Black justice, said that rule did not fit. The lower court had changed none of the state’s election rules, she wrote. It had corrected what the state said about them. “I would not disturb a clearly justifiable federal court order issued to ensure that the public receives accurate information about a State’s electoral processes,” she wrote.
She also wrote that the judge had found the misstatement “necessary to ensure that certain citizens were not unduly burdened in their exercise of the fundamental right to vote.”
The practical result is that voters in a state with a competitive Senate race, Republican John E. Sununu against Democrat Chris Pappas, will meet guidance that the district court found overstated the law. Whether a poll worker accepts a student ID as supporting evidence now depends on what Scanlan’s office tells them.
Control of the Senate could turn on that race. Election Day is Nov. 3.
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