Supreme Court Allows New Hampshire to Bar Student IDs for Voting

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday allowed New Hampshire to fully prohibit voters from using student IDs as identification in the midterm elections, granting a Republican-backed emergency appeal.

A state law passed this year removed student IDs from the forms of identification expressly accepted for obtaining a ballot. New Hampshire’s secretary of state subsequently issued guidance barring their use as a backup method of verifying a voter’s identity. A lower-court judge left the law intact but blocked that guidance in early October, prompting the state’s appeal. The Republican National Committee supported the state’s request.

In an unsigned, one-paragraph decision, the Supreme Court cited the Purcell principle, under which lower federal courts ordinarily should not change election rules shortly before an election. The court said the lower court had not identified a reason to depart from that principle.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to publicly dissent. She argued that the lower court’s order had left the state’s election rule untouched and therefore did not necessarily raise Purcell’s concern about last-minute judicial changes to election procedures.

New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella praised the ruling, saying it protected the application of state election laws and avoided uncertainty for voters and election officials.