The push for voter identification requirements benefits from a boost in a New Orleans courtroom.
Texas’ voter ID law that was twice blocked over findings of discrimination can stay in effect for the 2018 elections, a U.S. appeals court ruled Friday.
It was the second major ruling over voting rights in the U.S. this week after an Arkansas judge on Thursday blocked that state’s voter ID measure as unconstitutional.
But in a 2-1 decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, the Texas law that critics have slammed as one of the toughest voter ID measures in the nation was seen as a suitable replacement for the original 2011 law that a federal judge had likened to a “poll tax” on minority voters. …
… U.S. Circuit Jones Edith Jones said the lower court went too far.
“The district court relied too heavily on evidence of Texas’s state-sponsored discrimination from a bygone era,” Jones wrote in her majority opinion.
The revisions to Texas’ law were also supported by the U.S. Justice Department — a move that amounted to a complete reversal for the federal government, which under former President Barack Obama had joined minority rights groups in suing over the law. But two months after Donald Trump took office, the Justice Department abandoned the argument that Texas passed voter ID rules with discrimination in mind and said the changes should satisfy the courts.
