Supreme Court Allows Texas to Go Ahead with Voter ID Law

The Supreme Court today officially permitted the state of Texas to proceed with its controversial voter ID law for this November’s midterm elections. A majority of justices earlier today rejected a Department of Justice request to prohibit Texas from engaging in a practice it believed to be discriminatory.

A federal judge sided with the DOJ and struck down the law just last week, ruling that it “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.” He even compared it to the poll tax.

A federal appeals court overturned that ruling this Tuesday, and now the Supreme Court has weighed in and will allow Texas to proceed with the law in place.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a dissent warning that the law “risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.”

[image via Jarek Tuszynski]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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