[JURIST] A panel for the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit [official website] on Wednesday ruled [opinion, PDF] that a Texas voter identification law [SB14 summary] discriminated against blacks and Hispanics and violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) [DOJ summary]. The law, which is one of the strictest in the country, requires that voters bring a government issued ID to the polling locations. These forms of ID may include a driver’s license, a US passport, a concealed handgun license and an election identification certificate issued by the Texas State Department of Public Safety [official website]. The plaintiffs argued that the law was discriminatory as a great deal of minorities and poor individuals do not own or have easy access to these forms of ID. The court upheld the lower court’s ruling finding that law was discriminatory, but remanded the case for further examination on whether Texas enacted the law with a discriminatory purpose.

Voting rights have been a contentious issue in the US recently. In May the New Hampshire Supreme Court struck down [JURIST report] a 2012 law requiring voters to be state residents, not just domiciled in the state. In March the US Supreme Court denied certiorari [JURIST report] in Frank v. Walker, allowing Wisconsin’s voter identification law to stand. Wisconsin’s Act 23, which requires residents to present photo ID to vote, was struck down by a federal district court, but reinstated [JURIST reports] by the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in September. Also in March Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed a new law [JURIST report] that made Oregon the first state in the nation to institute automatic voter registration. In November a federal appeals court rejected [JURIST report] a Kansas rule that required prospective voters to show proof-of-citizenship documents before registering using a federal voter registration form.