They say everything is bigger in Texas. From there, tonight, a 147-page opinion in Veasey v. Perry striking down an expansion of their voter ID law.
The Court holds that SB 14 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. The Court further holds that
SB 14 constitutes an unconstitutional poll tax.
More analysis is below.
Comments from Attorney General Holder are here.
Also, Professor Levitt blogs here.
The opinion itself is at this link.
While writing this, manneckdesign alerted me to this 6-3 ruling in Frank v. Walker. The Wisconsin Voter ID law is on hold again!
electionlawyer's SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS
Texas' SB14 was passed in 2011. Prior to then, voters voting at the polls had to have a Texas voter registration card (nonphoto) as ID. The new law required photo ID going forward; only a small number of documents were deemed acceptable.
The law was put on hold while the Department of Justice reviewed it under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act; however, in June 2013, the Supreme Court decided the Shelby County case, holding that the coverage formula animating Section 5 was unconstitutional and thus, Section 5 was unenforceable.
Texas moved to implement the law, at which point the present suit was instituted. The trial judge, after canvassing the history of voting and nonvoting discrimination against Latinos and African-Americans at the hands of "Anglos," explained that about 4.5% of Texas voters lacked the photo ID necessary under SB14. However, within that group, Latino registered voters were 177-195 percent more likely than "Anglos" to lack the necessary photo ID, while for African-Americans, it was 271-305 percent.
For those that lacked the necessary ID, the process of getting it was difficult, expensive, and time consuming, and the poor people people needing to get it were the last ones needing difficulty, expense, or wasting time added to their lives. And with absentee voting being very limited in Texas, avoiding the requirement by voting absentee was available to only a few people. Add to that the "rollout" of the law was done very quickly, and the voter education was practically nonexistent.
Unlike Crawford, which held Indiana's voter ID law facially valid on a limited record, the record here was anything but limited. The judge's legal conclusions were:
1. The law had to be judged under an intermediate form of scrutiny, known as Anderson/Burdick, for substantial but not severe burdens on voting. Under that test, the justifications of the law are judicially weighed against its burdens. The law failed under that test, with voter impersonation fraud being so minimal, and the burdens on the 4.5% people without ID being so substantial, the law impinged the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of voters.
2. The law violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, because its results (even without regard to its intent) were to disenfranchise statistically significant higher numbers/percentages of people in protected classes (race, ethnicity, etc.) and fails under the Thornburg v. Gingles multifactored test.
3. The law also violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act because it has a discriminatory purpose. The discriminatory purpose finding likewise means the law violates the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. It also has implications for possibly baling Texas back into the Voting Rights Act under Section 3 of that Act.
This is a major finding (a "BFD" as the kids today like to call it). :-)
Discriminatory purpose is found from Texas' frightening historical practices, together with the fact that as the legislation moved forward, amendments offered to it seemed to chip away more and more at the rights of protected classes. The legislature knew of the effects of these amendments, and while there is no "smoking gun" of a discriminatory writing or outburst, legislators' knowledge of the consequences of their actions, and the fast-tracking they applied to this bill in the 2011 session, supports a finding of discriminatory purpose.
4. The law is a poll tax violative of the 24th Amendment. While incidental burdens or costs connected to getting ID for voting will not be a poll tax, the costs here of getting underlying ID were much more substantial. Lacking an exception for people that affirm their indigency, the law is stricken as unconstitutional.
An injunction will issue restraining enforcement of the law. Professor Hasen says it may not apply to this election, but I respectfully don't see the basis of that conclusion.
A greater fear for me -- and a concern he also articulates -- is whether a higher Court will view this as a Purcell change in the law too close to an election -- the same theory applied tonight to restore the injunction against the Wisconsin laws.
The final chapter in this saga has not been written, but the final paragraph of the diary has been. Please post any comments/questions, and I will try to respond.