Supreme Court upholds Indiana voting ID law

At issue was an Indiana law requiring voters to show ID when voting in person. Challengers claimed the law was unconstitutional on its face, burdening the right to vote in violation of the 14th Amendment. They also argued it didn’t fix the problems it was passed to fix. The challengers to the law lost in the district court and in the federal circuit court.

Justice Stevens announced the decision of the court. He had Justices Roberts and Kennedy signing onto his opinion. He took a practical view, agreeing with the lower court that this kind of challenge to the law must fail because the challengers couldn’t name any person who would be deterred from voting. Because of that, the Court can’t determine how heavy a burden showing ID is, and therefore the law should be upheld. This opinion does not preclude a later lawsuit, brought by actual people who were unable to vote due to the law.

Justice Scalia (with Justices Thomas and Alito) went further, finding the burden of showing ID was not unreasonable. “The burden of acquiring, possessing, and showing a free photo identification is simply not severe, because it does not even represent a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting.” (internal citations omitted).

Justice Souter (with Justice Ginsburg) found the burden significant (you have to go to the DMV, a separate trip, and he talks about how many offices there are in Indiana and how far a trip it could be, in contrast to polling places, which are generally more numerous). He found the state’s justifications (election modernization, combating voter fraud) insufficient to justify the burden.

Justice Breyer, writing alone, had a short opinion (5 pages, compared to Stevens’s 21, Scalia’s 6, and Ginsburg’s 30) focusing on the disproportionate impact of the requirement. Not only was it a burden to get an ID (as Justice Souter argues), but it burdens poor, elderly, and disabled people more.