Washington, DC — The Supreme Court has cleared the way for New Hampshire to fully prohibit voters from using student identification cards to establish their identity in the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
The justices granted an emergency request backed by Republican state officials and blocked a lower-court order that had allowed student IDs to remain available as a backup form of identification.
New Hampshire enacted a law this year removing student IDs from the list of expressly accepted identification documents. The secretary of state later issued guidance barring their use even as a secondary method of proving identity.
A lower-court judge allowed the law itself to stand but blocked that additional guidance earlier this month. The Supreme Court reversed that portion of the ruling, citing the principle that courts generally should avoid changing election procedures shortly before voting.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to publicly dissent.
Republican state Rep. Donald McFarlane, who sponsored the law, argues that college-issued identification lacks the verification safeguards used for government IDs and said the restriction strengthens confidence in elections.
Opponents contend the rule unnecessarily complicates voting for college students who are otherwise eligible New Hampshire voters.
The ruling comes less than two weeks before Election Day and amid a closely watched Senate contest in the state.
The decision does not determine whether student IDs are inherently unreliable; it allows New Hampshire’s existing restriction to remain in effect for this election.
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