The Supreme Court on Monday declined to review a lower-court ruling that a Texas voter-ID law discriminates against minorities — at least for now.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said in a statement attached to the order that there was still more work for lower courts to do in assessing the law and that the Texas case could return to the high court once that review is final.
The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, one of the most conservative appeals courts in the country, last summer upheld a district court’s finding that 600,000 people, disproportionately minorities, lack the specific kind of identification required to cast a vote — a driver’s license, military ID, passport or weapons permit, among them — and that it would be difficult for many to secure such IDs.
[Appeals court says Texas law discriminates against minority voters]
The appeals court said the law had to be modified for last November’s elections. But the judges said a district judge needed to reconsider her earlier finding that the Texas legislature intentionally targeted minority voters when it passed the law in 2011. That process is underway.
The Supreme Court in 2008 approved an Indiana law that required a photo ID for voters, and that set off a series of actions in Republican-led states to enact similar laws.
But civil rights groups and the Obama administration have said the new laws are far more restrictive than Indiana’s and deliberately require identification that is more common for white voters to possess than for African Americans and Hispanics. A number of those laws have been struck or modified by courts, including in North Carolina.
The Supreme Court — short-handed since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia last February — has yet to accept any of those cases to provide a nationwide standard.
If the Texas case returns, the high court is likely to have regained a majority of conservative justices, as President Trump has said he will nominate Scalia’s replacement within two weeks.
Last summer, the appeals court ruled 9 to 6 that U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos was right to have stopped the Texas law because it disproportionately hurt minority voters.
But the majority said Ramos had gone too far in finding that the state legislature had a discriminatory intent in passing the law. The majority said she should reconsider that question under more demanding standards.
That trial was supposed to have started soon. But it was delayed to give the new Trump administration time to weigh in on the question. That raises the possibility that the Department of Justice, which has been a party challenging the law, would switch sides.
The Campaign Legal Center, which represented challengers to the law, declared victory.
“I am extremely pleased that the justices recognize that this case does not merit review at this time,” said Gerry Hebert, the organization’s director of voting rights and redistricting. “The full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and every other federal court that has heard this case has ruled Texas’s photo voter ID law is discriminatory. Now, Texas, which ranks poorly in voter participation, should work to ensure that every eligible voter in the state is able to cast a ballot going forward.”
But Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said the Supreme Court’s decision was only a temporary pause.
“Chief Justice Roberts made it very clear that the case will be an even stronger posture for Supreme Court review after further proceedings in lower courts,” Paxton said in a statement. “Texas enacted a common sense voter ID law to safeguard the integrity of our elections, and we will continue to fight for the law in the district court, the Fifth Circuit, and if necessary, the Supreme Court again.”
The court also decided not to get involved in a challenge to Alabama’s death penalty procedure.
Several justices in the past have questioned the state’s death penalty regime, especially Justice Sonia Sotomayor. But there were no noted dissents from the court’s decision not to review the system, which now is the only one in the country that lets judges overrule juries and impose death sentences.