Hundreds of thousands of people stymied by Texas' absurdly strict voter ID law will finally get a fair break in casting their ballots in November.
A federal appeals court ruled last week that the law discriminates against black and Latino voters and violates the federal Voting Rights Act. The court ordered a federal district court to come up with a remedy for the law's flaws in time for the November election.
The decision by the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, one of the most conservative appellate courts, is a huge blow to the 2011 Texas law, which went into effect in 2013. Equally important, the ruling signals to other states that restrictive laws will not be allowed to stand.
Civil-rights advocates, who have won four court decisions against this law, have argued that it is a scheme to favor Republicans by disenfranchising poor and minority voters, who tend to vote Democratic but often lack the government-issued photo identification — like a driver's license, passport or concealed-handgun license — required at the polling station.
The Texas law is one of the worst examples of voter suppression enacted by Republican statehouses since 2010, all in the guise of combating voter fraud. The appellate court rightly punctured this false claim, noting that there were "only two convictions for in-person voter impersonation fraud out of 20 million votes cast in the decade" before Texas enacted the law.
A number of restrictive voting laws were enacted or took effect after the Supreme Court's 2013 decision striking down a crucial and still-needed part of the Voting Rights Act, which had required Texas and other states with histories of racial discrimination to obtain preclearance from the federal government for any voting changes. Now, voter suppression challenges are underway in several states. Also last week, a federal court in Wisconsin, in finding discrimination, ordered that voters be allowed to simply sign eligibility affidavits and not be required to meet the state's photo ID requirement.
FROM AN EDITORIAL IN THE NEW YORK TIMES
