A federal appeals court upheld a revamped Texas voter ID law Friday.
In its 2-1 ruling, the three-judge panel on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a district court’s permanent injunction blocking the law, which was enacted in May. The appeals court had stayed the injunction in September.
Writing for the majority, Judge Edith Jones said the injunction from the district court exceeded “the scope of the actual violations found by the court,” and said the lower court had “no legal or factual basis to invalidate SB 5.”
“The court here overlooked SB 5’s improvements for disadvantaged minority voters and neither sought evidence on nor made any finding that the Texas legislature in 2017 intentionally discriminated when enacting SB 5,” Jones wrote in the decision. “In fact, no evidence was offered to show that the agreed interim remedy, in place for the full panoply of elections in a presidential year, was insufficient —and that remedy served as the model for SB 5.”
Jones, nominated to the appeals court by former President Ronald Reagan, said the ruling from the New Orleans-based court does not prevent future challenges to SB 5 and said the plaintiffs in the case can still file a new lawsuit “if the promise of the law to remedy disparate impact on indigent minority voters is not fulfilled.”
The law at the center of the case, SB 5, was a revised version of an early voter-identification law that had also been challenged in court. Under SB 5, voters that do not have a state-approved form of photo ID can sign a sworn declaration stating he or she has a “reasonable impediment” that prevented him or her from obtaining the ID.
The goal of SB 5 was to remedy issues with the initial voter ID law enacted in 2011, SB 14.
In an opinion Friday concurring in part and dissenting in part, Judge James Graves argued a “hog in a silk waistcoast is still a hog.”
“SB 14 is an unconstitutional disenfranchisement of duly qualified electors. SB 5 is merely its adorned alter ego. The Texas Legislature enacted SB 14 with an intent to suppress minority voting. Because the thread of discriminatory intent runs through both SB 14 and SB 5, the district court’s judgment and remedial order should be affirmed,” Graves wrote.
A federal judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas issued a permanent injunction blocking SB 5 from taking effect in August. U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos said the new law did not “fully ameliorate” the “discriminatory features” of the original law from 2011.
The practices instituted in SB 14, she said, were “enacted with discriminatory intent — knowingly placing additional burdens on a disproportionate number of Hispanic and African-American voters.”
In a statement Friday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton praised the decision from the 5th Circuit.
“This court rightly recognized that when the legislature passed Senate Bill 5 last session, it complied with every change the 5th Circuit ordered to the original voter ID law,” Paxton said. “Safeguarding the integrity of our elections is essential to preserving our democracy. The revised voter ID law removes any burden on voters who cannot obtain a photo ID.”
