Ahead of Midterms, Supreme Court Lets New Hampshire Reject Student IDs at the Polls

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday allowed New Hampshire officials to reject student IDs as a valid form of identification when voters cast their ballots in next month's midterm elections, adding a new turn to the legal fight over the state's voter identification rules just weeks before voting.

Earlier, a lower court judge had found that state officials had gone further than a new law restricting the use of student IDs to obtain a ballot. The judge ruled that officials still had to consider student IDs alongside other evidence when voters lacked other means of verifying their identity.

The Supreme Court, however, took issue with the judge intervening this close to the election. The high court has long said that orders handed down too close to an election can cause voter confusion — an idea known as the Purcell principle. In its decision, the court also cited the recent legal back-and-forth over Missouri's redistricting maps.

"Here, the District Court did not point to anything that would justify deviating from that principle," the majority wrote in its opinion. In other words, the justices found no reason to keep the lower court's last-minute order in place.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, arguing that the rule did not apply here because the lower court judge was in fact helping to ensure that the public received accurate information.

"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," Jackson wrote. "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 added.

The dispute began in April, when Governor Kelly Ayotte signed House Bill 323 into law. The law removed student IDs from the list of identification expressly considered valid for obtaining a ballot, and it took effect on June 2.

After the law went into effect, New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan issued guidance to election officials about the change, and multiple training sessions were held, so preparations on the ground were already following the new rule.

"New Hampshire has a responsibility to protect the integrity of its elections and ensure that election laws are applied as written," Attorney General John Formella, a Republican, said in a statement.

"The Supreme Court's decision is an important victory for our efforts to defend those laws and prevent last-minute court orders from creating uncertainty for voters and election officials. We will continue to defend New Hampshire's election laws and the safeguards they provide," Formella continued.

The Supreme Court's decision, however, was not a final ruling on the merits of the case, and the underlying litigation over the law remains ongoing. For now, voters in New Hampshire will not be able to use a student ID to obtain a ballot in the midterm elections, but the legal battle over the law is not over.