The Supreme Court ruled early Saturday morning that Texas could enforce its voter ID requirement law, SB 14, in upcoming elections in early November, Dallas News reports. The decision comes in the wake of a federal judge’s ruling last week that the law was unconstitutional. An appeals court has since put that ruling on hold.
Three Supreme Court justices—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan—dissented against allowing the law to remain in place. Ginsburg wrote, “The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law, one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.”
Last week, US District Judge Nelva Gonzalez Ramos ruled that the law “creates an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote, has an impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African-Americans and was imposed with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose.” Ramos also agreed with estimates from civil rights groups that the strict identification requirements could keep an estimated 600,000 registered voters away from the polls. Texas officials have contested that statistic.
Early voting in Texas is set to begin on Monday. The upcoming federal general elections will be the first conducted under SB 14.
[Photo Credit: AP Images]
