Supreme Court Lets New Hampshire Bar Student IDs at the Polls in November

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for New Hampshire to bar student IDs from being used to establish a voter's identity in the Nov. 3 election, granting an emergency request from the state and pausing a federal judge's ruling, according to SCOTUSblog and NBC News.

In a brief, unsigned order in Scanlan v. Coalition for Open Democracy, No. 26A512, the justices stayed the district court's ruling while the state's appeal proceeds. The order cited the principle, often called the Purcell principle, that "lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election," SCOTUSblog reported. "Here, the District Court did not point to anything that would justify deviating from that principle," the order said, according to NBC News.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only dissenter. "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, according to NBC News. She argued that U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante had "issued a targeted order" that was "reasonably designed to address alleged misinformation, not to change the law," SCOTUSblog reported.

The state's request had the backing of the Republican National Committee, NBC News reported. New Hampshire's ballot includes a closely watched U.S. Senate race between Republican former Sen. John E. Sununu and Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas for the seat held by retiring Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.

The dispute began with a state law, HB 323, that legislators passed in April and that took effect in June. It removed student ID cards from the forms of identification that are expressly valid to obtain a ballot, according to SCOTUSblog. The Coalition for Open Democracy, a nonprofit that helps high schools run voter-registration drives, sued, arguing that the law burdens the right to vote and was intended to discriminate against young voters.

Laplante declined to block the law itself. But on Oct. 2, he put on hold a directive issued in April by Secretary of State David Scanlan, a Republican, to the extent that it barred or discouraged election officials from considering student IDs under a separate "safety-valve" provision, SCOTUSblog and NBC News reported. That provision lets a voter without qualifying photo ID establish identity with "any other evidence that reasonably establishes that it is more likely than not that the person is who they claim to be," NBC News reported. Laplante found that Scanlan's guidance went further than the statute, which barred student IDs only as a primary form of identification.

After the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to pause Laplante's ruling, Scanlan went to the Supreme Court. He argued that the order would require the state to undo the steps it had taken since April to prepare for the election, saying his office had "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," according to SCOTUSblog. He also said the district court had acted "based on its own interpretation of state law, while generating more questions than it answers."

The Coalition for Open Democracy countered that Laplante had not blocked a state law but had enforced "the legislature's statutes against an executive gloss exceeding the statutes' reach," and that Scanlan had already changed his website to say that supervisors may consider a student ID along with other evidence. "The Secretary's revised guidance is now the status quo," the group told the court, SCOTUSblog reported.

In her dissent, Jackson wrote that "the relief the District Court provided actually promoted the interests Purcell sought to protect," because an injunction against material misrepresentations about election rules "does not contribute to public confusion, it prevents that very problem," according to SCOTUSblog.

With the stay in place, student IDs cannot be used in New Hampshire this November either as a primary ID or as backup evidence when voters seek to establish their identities, NBC News reported. The state's appeal continues in the lower courts.

Under Laplante's ruling, election officials could still have taken a student ID into account when trying to determine whether someone is a valid voter, NBC News reported. The Supreme Court's stay removes that option for this election, which takes place Nov. 3.