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Texas May Proceed With Voter ID Law, Appeals Court Finds
By ERIK ECKHOLMOCT. 14, 2014
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A federal appeals court said Tuesday that Texas can enforce its strong voter identification requirements in the November election, temporarily blocking a lower court’s ruling last week that the law was an unconstitutional effort to suppress the votes of blacks and Hispanics.
The three-judge panel put off consideration of whether the lower-court decision, which condemned the law, should stand permanently. Rather, it said that with early voting starting on Oct. 20, a change in the rules could cause confusion among voters and poll workers, something the Supreme Court has sought to avoid in other cases.
“Based primarily on the extremely fast-approaching election date, we stay the district court’s judgment pending appeal,” Judge Edith Brown Clement wrote on behalf of the panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, based in New Orleans.
Continue reading the main story Related Coverage - Courts Strike Down Voter ID Laws in Wisconsin and TexasOCT. 9, 2014
The contested Texas law requires that voters show certain types of state-issued ID, a far tighter requirement than in the past, when voters could provide varied evidence, even an electric bill, establishing their identities. Virtually no examples of in-person voter fraud have been reported.
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In a 147-page opinion issued Thursday, after a two-week trial, Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos had said the law “creates an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote.” She noted the lack of evidence that voter fraud was a threat and cited expert testimony that about 600,000 Texans, mainly poor, black and Hispanic, lack the newly required IDs.
Judge Ramos ruled that the law was adopted “with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose.” If her finding of intentional discrimination is upheld, it could trigger new federal oversight of Texas election procedures, something the Justice Department is seeking.
In another case last week, involving Wisconsin, the United States Supreme Court temporarily barred the imposition of new voter ID requirements, with the opposite effect of the Texas order but for the same stated reasons. The Wisconsin law took effect only last month, with little advance preparation by election officials, and the court apparently believed that its immediate imposition would disrupt voting on Nov. 4.
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Greg Abbott, the Texas attorney general and the Republican candidate for governor, made a similar argument about timing to the Fifth Circuit, in addition to challenging Judge Ramos’s condemnation of the law. But in this case, opponents, including a range of citizen groups as well as the federal Department of Justice, said that the state could easily revert to its longstanding, looser identification requirements.
The opponents of the law expressed concern about the order, saying the risk of disenfranchising voters outweighed the potential for disruption. They were considering whether to file an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court.
The order “places in harm’s way the votes and voices of more than 600,000 registered voters, a disproportionate number of whom are people of color,” said Ryan P. Haygood, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. “This law does all harm and no good,” he said in a statement, adding that the appeals court order “will not stand.”
But Lauren Bean, a spokeswoman for the Texas attorney general, said, “We are pleased that the appeals court has unanimously agreed that Texas’ voter ID law should remain in effect for the upcoming election.” She added that “the state will continue to defend the voter ID law and remains confident that the district court’s misguided ruling will be overturned on the merits.”
One judge on the appeals panel, Gregg Costa, wrote in a concurring opinion that “we should be extremely reluctant to have an election take place under a law that a district court has found, and that our court may find, is discriminatory.” But he said the Supreme Court’s apparent “concern about confusion” from last-minute changes in voting rules “should carry the day |
