In a 2-1 ruling, a federal appeals court has given the go-ahead for Texas to implement a revised – and stricter – version of its voter identification law.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed a lower judge’s ruling that would have banned the Lone Star State from using the voter ID measure known as SB5 for the November Election, Politico reports.
“The State has made a strong showing that it is likely to succeed on the merits. SB5 allows voters without qualifying photo ID to cast regular ballots by executing a declaration that they face a reasonable impediment to obtaining qualifying photo ID. This declaration is made under the penalty of perjury,” Judges Jerry Smith and Jennifer Elrod wrote in a joint order Tuesday. “The State has made a strong showing that this reasonable-impediment procedure remedies plaintiffs’ alleged harm and thus forecloses plaintiffs’ injunctive relief.”
The judges castigated U.S. District Court Judge Nelva Gonzalez Ramos for exceeding the scope of a previous ruling instructing her to assess whether or not SB5 cured problems with SB14, another voter ID measure passed in Texas in 2011. Ramos ruled the original measure was an effort to discriminate based on basis and that SB5 didn’t solve the problem.
“The district court went beyond the scope of the mandate on remand,” Smith and Elrod wrote. “Simply put, whether SB 5 should be enjoined — as opposed to whether it remedies SB 14’s ills — was not an issue before the district court on remand.”
Read more at:
http://thefederalistpapers.org/us/5th-circuit-texas-voter-id?utm_source=FBLC&utm_medium=FB&utm_campaign=LC
