Supreme Court lets New Hampshire reject student IDs in voting

The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed New Hampshire to reject student IDs as supporting evidence of voter identity in the November 3 midterm election, while the state’s appeal and a lawsuit challenging the law continue. In an unsigned order issued Thursday, October 22, the justices stayed a lower-court ruling that had barred the state from enforcing guidance against considering student IDs under an alternative identity-verification procedure. The stay lets election officials refuse to consider those cards even when a voter lacks another accepted form of identification. Student IDs had already been removed from the list of identification expressly accepted to obtain a ballot under state law. The court cited the principle that lower federal courts ordinarily should not change election rules close to an election. It said the district court had not identified a reason to depart from that principle in this case. The order is an interim measure while New Hampshire’s appeal proceeds, not a final ruling on the merits of the challenge to HB 323. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. She argued that the lower court had not changed the law, but had sought to correct misleading guidance...