AUSTIN, Texas — Texas’ strict voter ID law discriminates against minorities and the poor and must quickly be scrubbed of those effects before the November election, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The ruling was a striking election-year victory for the administration of President Barack Obama, which had taken the unusual step of bringing the U.S. Justice Department into Texas to help fight the case. It’s also a blow to Republican lawmakers whose 2011 law had been enforced in three prior statewide elections.
Voters will still need to show identification at the polls under the decision by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, according to attorneys who challenged the law, but a lower court will now also have to devise a way for Texas to accommodate those who cannot.
The 9-6 decision agreed with a lower court ruling that Texas had violated the federal Voting Rights Act. Elections experts in the long-running legal fight have testified that Hispanics were twice as likely and blacks three times more likely than whites to lack an acceptable ID under the law. They also said lower-income Texas residents were more likely to lack underlying documents to obtain a free state voting ID.
