Ketanji Brown Jackson Breaks With SCOTUS Voting Order as Election Looms

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole dissenter in a new Supreme Court order that green-lit New Hampshire to fully ban student IDs for voting during November's midterm elections.

In the order, Brown concluded, "I respectfully dissent because—even, and perhaps especially, when an election is looming—I would not disturb a clearly justifiable federal-court order issued to ensure that the public receives accurate information about a State’s electoral processes."

New Hampshire passed a law earlier this year that said student IDs were not an acceptable form of identification to get a ballot, the Associated Press (AP) reports.

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The High Court's order ultimately blocks students from using their school IDs as a backup, the AP says.

New Hampshire's Republican Secretary of State David Scanlan barred the IDs from being an acceptable backup after the state passed the law, the AP reports. A judge first left the law to stand as is but reversed course earlier this month, prompting the emergency appeal. The emergency appeal in Scanlan's case was ultimately granted by the High Court on Thursday.

Legal Counsel for The Coalition For Open Democracy, the plaintiff in the case, called the court's order "wrong."

"The Court’s decision grants a stay which both the federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit denied, blocking an injunction that has now been in place for almost three weeks, injecting confusion into the election—precisely what the Purcell principle is supposed to prevent—and authorizing an unconstitutional policy that will deprive young voters of their right to vote.

"We applaud Justice Jackson for her dissent, in which she stands for the Constitution, the right to vote, and a rational application of Purcell. We will continue to vigorously litigate this case in the defense of the fundamental right to vote of young voters across New Hampshire," the statement read.

The order mentions the Purcell principle, which is a legal concept in election law in the United States that advises courts against altering voting rules too close to an election.

The election related ruling comes just 12 days before the midterms.

Midterm elections are commonly viewed as a test of the political environment facing the party in power, and the president's party has historically lost seats during them. President Donald Trump lost New Hampshire during the 2024 presidential election to then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

The state's open Senate seat is rated as lean Democrat by the Cook Political Report and the governor's race is rated likely Republican by the forecaster.

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