Supreme Court allows New Hampshire to restrict use of student IDs in voting

The Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon cleared the way for New Hampshire to bar the use of student IDs as the valid photo ID required to obtain a ballot there. In a brief, unsigned order, the justices paused a ruling by a federal judge in New Hampshire, citing the principle (often known as the Purcell principle) that “lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the lone dissenter. She contended that U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante had merely “issued a targeted order” that was “reasonably designed to address alleged misinformation, not to change the law.”

Legislators in New Hampshire passed the law, known as HB 323, in April, and it went into effect in June. The Coalition for Open Democracy, a nonprofit that (among other things) helps high schools to promote and run voter-registration drives, went to federal court, where it argued that the law violates the Constitution because it burdens the right to vote and because it was intended to discriminate against young voters.

In an order earlier this month, Laplante declined to block the provision of HB 323 that, he said, “removed student ID cards from the forms of identification that are expressly valid to obtain a ballot.” However, he barred the state from enforcing a directive, issued by Secretary of State David Scanlan in April, “to the extent it prohibits or discourages election officials from considering student IDs as evidence of voter identity” under a separate “safety-valve provision that permits a voter without qualifying photo identification to establish identity by other means.”

After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit turned down the state’s request to pause Laplante’s ruling, Scanlan came to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to step in. Laplante’s order, he said, requires the state to undo all of the steps that it has taken since April, when he issued his directive, to prepare for the election. Among other things, he said, his office “published student voting guides, updated polling place posters, updated its website, conducted social media outreach, produced and ran radio ads, and spoke at public events to explain how identity verification would work.” Moreover, Scanlan continued, the district court did so, “based on its own interpretation of state law, while generating more questions than it answers. These are the precise circumstances in which the considerations animating” the Purcell principle “are at their apex,” he concluded.

The Coalition for Open Democracy countered that, unlike other cases involving the Purcell principle, Laplante did not block a state law; instead, his order “enforces the legislature’s statutes against an executive gloss exceeding the statutes’ reach.” It further argued that Scanlan has already made the changes required by Laplante to his website, which now indicates “that supervisors may consider a student ID along with other evidence. The Secretary’s revised guidance is now the status quo,” the group emphasized.

In its one-paragraph order on Thursday, the justices stayed Laplante’s ruling while the state’s appeal moves forward.

In her dissent, Jackson argued that “the relief the District Court provided actually promoted the interests Purcell sought to protect. 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.”