Supreme Court: New Hampshire Student ID Voting Ban Allowed

The justices were asked to intervene in a fight over the interpretation of a new law in New Hampshire that limits the forms of identification voters can use at the polls. People vote in the Democratic primaries at Blair-Caldwell Library, Tuesday, June 30, 2026, in Denver. (AP Photo/Rebecca Slezak) WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court issued an emergency order Thursday permitting Republican officials to ban New Hampshire voters from using student identification cards to vote in the November election. The justices granted the application to pause a lower court’s injunction that required New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan to revise guidance he issued announcing that student IDs could no longer be used for any purpose at all. The stay will remain pending the disposition of the appeal in the First Circuit. “This court has repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election,” the court wrote in the order. “Here, the district court did not point to anything that would justify deviating from that principle.” The Supreme Court has ruled against making changes to election rules too close to an election in order to avoid potential voter confusion. But in a dissenting opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote this particular case is slightly different because the state left its election rules untouched and was attempting to elucidate public confusion. “Here, the district court made a (certainly not clearly erroneous) determination that correcting a publicized misstatement about what New Hampshire’s election rules require was necessary to ensure that certain citizens were not unduly burdened in their exercise of the fundamental right to vote,” the Joe Biden appointee wrote. “So it issued a targeted order, requiring only that the relevant government official conform his public statements to the letter of state law rather than summarizing what the law required in a manner that could mislead voters and local election workers,” she added. She said the lower court’s order was reasonably designed to address election rule misinformation, not to change the law. The state enacted a new law in June that removed student IDs from its list of expressly valid photo identification. But voting rights groups and state officials disagree over a safety valve provision that lets election officials use the cards as secondary evidence to verify a voter’s identity. A lower court sided with voting rights groups, ordering New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan to revise guidance he issued announcing that student IDs could no longer be used for any purpose at all. Scanlan asked the Supreme Court to intervene, claiming the lower court ignored rules prohibiting federal courts from interfering with voting rules too close to an election. “The district court’s disagreement with the secretary’s interpretation of state law is nuanced, and the press and public could very easily misunderstand what the district court actually said,” Scanlan wrote. “To that end, there is substantial risk that voters could show up at the polls with only their student IDs in hand. But even under the district court’s interpretation, that is not the law.” Scanlan claimed that re-educating local election officials and the public was practically impossible and risked voter confusion, if not voter disenfranchisement. But voting rights groups challenging the law said that there was already direct evidence that Scanlan’s guidance disenfranchised voters. They said the secretary proved it was possible to issue new guidance quickly because his website has told voters that supervisors may consider student ID along with other evidence since the lower court’s order on Oct. 2. “The secretary’s revised guidance is now the status quo,” the voting rights groups wrote. “A stay wouldn’t preserve it. It would reverse the rules for a second time in a month.” In her d

Lawyers advising voters, campaigns, or educational institutions in New Hampshire must inform clients that student IDs are not valid primary identification for voting in the upcoming election, following the Supreme Court's emergency order. This decision reinforces the principle that federal courts are reluctant to alter election rules close to an election, setting a precedent for similar challenges.

Source: Original reporting via Courthouse News Service