8-1 Supreme Court Decision Upends Student ID Fight in Battleground Days Before Key Senate Election

Student IDs will not be valid to vote in New Hampshire after a Supreme Court 8-1 decision released Thursday.

In an unsigned order, the justices paused Oct. 2 and Oct. 5 orders by U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante, a George W. Bush appointee, that prevented the state from enforcing its restrictions on student IDs as a valid form of voter identification.

Justices cited past precedent, noting, “This Court has repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election.”

They added, “Here, the District Court did not point to anything that would justify deviating from that principle.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the lone dissenter, writing, “Consequently, here, the District Court’s injunction was reasonably designed to address alleged misinformation, not to change the law.”

New Hampshire is among a few states that could decide which party controls the U.S. Senate, as Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas takes on former Republican Sen. John Sununu, the son of a former governor and brother of another former governor.

In April, the state Legislature passed a bill, HB 323, to prevent student IDs from being used as valid identification to obtain a ballot. The law went into effect in June.

New Hampshire lawmakers noted that student IDs often lack expiration dates and can remain in circulation after they are no longer valid, and generally lack the address verification, citizenship confirmation, and security features associated with government-issued identification.

The Coalition for Open Democracy sued, alleging the law put an undue burden on the right to vote and discriminated against young voters.

Laplante’s order declined to block the provision of HB 323 that removed student ID cards from the forms of identification allowed to obtain a ballot, SCOTUSblog reported. However, his ruling prevented the state from enforcing Secretary of State David Scanlan’s April directive to local election officials.

“The court accordingly enjoins enforcement of the April Directive to the extent it prohibits or discourages election officials from considering student IDs as evidence of voter identity under RSA 654:12(d)(4) and RSA 659:13(c)(1) and (3), and orders the Secretary of State to issue revised guidance for the November 2026 general election,” Laplante’s order said.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit declined to pause Laplante’s ruling, so Scanlan appealed to the high court for an emergency ruling with days to go before the midterm election.

In his brief to the court, Scanlan said students were already instructed on voting procedures, as were local officials.

“Over the next five months, local election officials were trained on the new identify-verification rules consistent with that guidance,” Scanlan’s petition said. “During that same timeframe, the secretary’s office published student voting guides, updated polling place posters, updated its website, conducted social media outreach, produced and ran radio ads, and spoke at public events to explain how identity verification would work.”

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