Supreme Court signs off on GOP officials’ student ID voting ban in New Hampshire

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.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 dissent, Jackson agreed with that assessment.“I respectfully dissent because — even, and perhaps especially, when an election is looming — I would not disturb a clearly justifiable federal-court order issued to ensure that the public receives accurate information about a state’s electoral processes,” Jackson wrote.Bryan Sells, the attorney for the Coalition for Open Democracy, said the justices’ decision was wrong.“The court’s decision grants a stay which both the federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit denied, blocking an injunction that has now been in place for almost three weeks, injecting confusion into the election — precisely what the Purcell principle is supposed to prevent — and authorizing an unconstitutional policy that will deprive young voters of their right to vote,” Sells said.Meanwhile, New Hampshire’s Attorney General John Formella applauded the decision.After the legislature passed HB 323 and it went into effect, the secretary of state issued guidance to election officials in April 2026 confirming that student IDs could not be used to register to vote or obtain a ballot. Numerous trainings on this guidance were conducted, Formella said.“New Hampshire has a responsibility to protect the integrity of its elections and ensure that election laws are applied as written,” Formella said.“The Supreme Court’s decision is an important victory for our efforts to defend those laws and prevent last-minute court orders from creating uncertainty for voters and election officials. We will continue to defend New Hampshire’s election laws and the safeguards they provide," he added.The Supreme Court has increasingly been asked to weigh in on election-related disputes as the midterms approach, issuing emergency rulings on television ad rates, gerrymandered voting maps and a national citizenship database for voter verification over the last month.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads