Supreme Court lets New Hampshire ban student IDs for midterm voting

The US Supreme Court cleared the way on Thursday for New Hampshire to fully ban student IDs as identification for voting in next month's midterm elections. The justices granted an emergency appeal backed by Republicans, blocking a lower court's ruling that had preserved student IDs as a backup method. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to publicly dissent.

The court cited a longstanding principle that judges should not change voting rules too close to Election Day — the same principle that produced a patchwork of last-minute rulings this cycle, including a federal judge's order halting the Trump administration's noncitizen-voting investigations across nine states. New Hampshire voters cast ballots in under two weeks, in a closely contested Senate race.

The state legislature passed a law this year removing student IDs from the list of expressly accepted identification for obtaining a ballot. The secretary of state then issued guidance barring student IDs as a backup way to prove identity. A judge left the law itself in place but blocked the guidance in early October, ruling that the practical effect of the change came too close to the election. That ruling prompted the appeal.

State Rep. Donald McFarlane, who sponsored the bill, said colleges lack the controls government agencies have when issuing ID cards, and called the decision "a victory for common sense" that lets the law "work as intended: strengthening voter identity verification, applying a consistent standard, and maintaining public confidence in New Hampshire elections." The Republican National Committee weighed in on the state's side.

The dispute is narrower than the rhetoric around it. New Hampshire requires photo ID at the polls; the question was whether a student ID could substitute when a voter lacks other documents — a category that skews young, mobile and Democratic. Whatever the fraud calculus, the practical effect is that one class of voters must clear a higher bar than others, decided by courts two weeks before ballots are printed.

The irony cuts both ways. The Purcell principle the conservative majority invoked — don't change rules near an election — exists to protect voters from confusion. It was applied here to uphold a new restriction imposed this year, on the grounds that blocking it would itself be a late change. The same logic that freezes voter-friendly rulings in place now freezes voter restrictions in place too, whichever arrives at the courthouse door last.

Jackson dissented alone. The student IDs will not be accepted on Tuesday two weeks out, in a state where a Senate seat may turn on a few thousand votes.