UPDATE @ 12:15 p.m. – Statement by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot on the ruling:
“The Supreme Court of the United States has already upheld Voter ID laws as a constitutional method of ensuring integrity at the ballot box. Today’s decision is wrong on the law and improperly prevents Texas from implementing the same type of ballot integrity safeguards that are employed by Georgia and Indiana – and were upheld by the Supreme Court. The State will appeal this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, where we are confident we will prevail.”
The courts have handed the State of Texas – really the Texas GOP – another defeat this week in their efforts to limit minority voting. Tuesday the redistricting maps drawn were rejected by a federal three-judge panel violate the federal Voting Rights Act. Today, a federal court in Washington has rejected the Texas Voter ID law, requiring voters show identification for the same reasons.
“Court holds that Texas failed to show that the law lacked retrogressive effect: ‘[A]s we have found, everything that Texas has submitted as affirmative evidence is unpersuasive, invalid or both … [U]ncontested record evidence conclusively shows that the implicit costs of obtaining an SB-14 qualifying ID will fall most heavily on the poor and that a disproportionately high percentage of African-Americans and Hispanics in Texas live in poverty.’”
Read more here.
