Supreme Court Clears Way for New Hampshire to Ban Student IDs for Voting
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for New Hampshire to fully ban the use of student identification cards for voting in the midterm elections, according to the Associated Press. The court acted through a brief, unsigned order that sided with an appeal backed by the Republican National Committee, the national committee of the Republican Party.
New Hampshire has required voters to show identification since 2012. Governor Kelly Ayotte signed a law removing student IDs from the list of standard forms of voter identification. The state's 2026 Election Procedure Manual, its official guide for election procedures, provides for eliminating student IDs for use in registration or in obtaining a ballot. Effective October 22, registrants cannot use a student ID card to prove their identity when registering to vote.
The dispute centred on a directive from New Hampshire officials stating that student IDs could not be used even as a backup option, which the directive called "safety valve" identification. A lower court judge blocked that directive, and state officials asked the Supreme Court to intervene.
In its order, the court cited the principle that lower federal courts should not alter election rules too close to election day, according to The Guardian. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the majority. The case is captioned Scanlan v. Coalition for Open Democracy and designated No. 26A512 in the court's order.
