WASHINGTON — In a victory for Republicans, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that student ID cards cannot be used in New Hampshire for the midterm elections.
The justices granted an emergency request filed by the state, which had the support of the Republican National Committee.
The New Hampshire runoff includes a closely watched Senate race that could play a key role in deciding who controls the chamber. Former Republican Sen. John E. Sununu is facing Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas for the seat held by incumbent Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.
The brief court order says a federal judge should not have ordered a change in voting rules so close to the Nov. 3 election, citing existing precedent on the point.
“Here, the district court has not pointed to anything that would justify a departure from this principle,” the unsigned order states.
Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only dissenter.
“I would not disrupt a clearly justifiable federal court order intended to ensure that the public receives accurate information about a state’s election processes,” she wrote.
Even though a state law restricting the use of student ID cards as a primary form of identification was already in effect, the ruling means that potential voters also cannot use them as backup documents when seeking to establish their identity.
The dispute stems from a state law enacted in April that removed student ID cards from the list of IDs election officials would accept when someone requests a ballot.
The measure was challenged by a nonprofit voting rights group called Coalition for Open Democracy, which argued that it illegally infringed on voting rights and discriminated against young voters.
U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante refused to block the law, but on Oct. 2 he intervened again, suspending the directives of New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan, a Republican.
Scanlan’s guidelines stipulated that student ID cards could not be used for any purpose when people were seeking to vote, which Laplante said went further than the law itself, which banned them only as a primary source of ID.
A separate provision of state law allows people to establish their identity using other, unofficial forms of identification. It says people can use “any other evidence that reasonably establishes that it is more likely than not that the person is who they say they are.”
Under Laplante’s ruling, election officials could still consider a student ID when trying to determine whether someone is a valid voter.
The Boston-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit refused to stay Laplante’s ruling, prompting the state to ask the Supreme Court to intervene.
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