Supreme Court Allows New Hampshire to Ban Student IDs for Voting

The Supreme Court has allowed New Hampshire to ban the use of student IDs for voting in the midterm elections, granting an emergency appeal from Republicans and blocking student IDs as a backup identification method. The decision was based on a long-standing legal principle that voting rules should not be altered close to an election.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole dissenter.

New Hampshire enacted a law earlier this year that removed student IDs as an explicitly accepted form of identification for casting a ballot. Subsequently, the secretary of state issued guidance that prohibited their use as a secondary means of verifying a voter's identity.

A lower court had initially upheld the law but blocked the secretary of state's guidance in early October, leading to the appeal to the Supreme Court. The Republican National Committee supported the state's appeal.

The ruling comes less than two weeks before the midterm elections, a period during which New Hampshire is set to hold a closely contested U.S. Senate race.