The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, October 22, allowed New Hampshire to fully enforce its restrictions on student identification for voting, granting an emergency request from Secretary of State David Scanlan less than two weeks before the November 3 midterm election, Bloomberg Law reported.

Source: Bloomberg Law

The unsigned order stayed the October 2 ruling of U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante, who had blocked Scanlan's guidance on a preliminary basis. The court said lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter election rules on the eve of an election — the so-called Purcell principle — and that the district court had not pointed to anything justifying a deviation, according to Democracy Docket's account of the order. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

Source: Democracy Docket

The dispute began with House Bill 323, a law signed by Governor Kelly Ayotte in April that removed student IDs from the list of identification voters can use to obtain a ballot. Scanlan then instructed election officials not to consider student IDs even under a separate 'safety valve' provision that lets voters without a listed photo ID prove their identity through other evidence that reasonably establishes who they are.

The Coalition for Open Democracy, a voter-advocacy group, sued in August. Judge Laplante declined to block the underlying student-ID law itself, but ruled that Scanlan had gone too far by categorically barring officials from considering a student ID as other evidence of identity. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals left that protection in place last week before the Supreme Court intervened, CNN reported.

Source: CNN via KION

New Hampshire voters will also fill an open U.S. Senate seat in November, replacing retiring Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen, in a race between Democratic Representative Chris Pappas and Republican former Senator John Sununu. The ruling is not a final decision on the law's merits; it decides which rules apply for this election while the litigation continues.