Supreme Court Lets New Hampshire Bar Student IDs for Voting in the Midterms

The Supreme Court has ruled that New Hampshire can bar voters from using student IDs at the polls in the November midterms, handing Republicans a win in a Senate battleground less than two weeks before Election Day.

An Emergency Order Under Purcell

The unsigned order, issued Thursday, lets Secretary of State David Scanlan fully enforce the state's position that student IDs cannot be used to obtain a ballot, even as backup evidence of identity. The court blocked an October 2 district court order that had required officials to consider student IDs alongside other evidence, saying the lower court pointed to nothing that would justify deviating from the Purcell principle, the doctrine that federal courts should not change election rules on the eve of an election. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to publicly dissent, arguing the district court's order prevented public confusion about the rules rather than causing it. The Republican National Committee backed Scanlan in the case.

How the Fight Started

New Hampshire's Republican led legislature enacted a law this spring removing student IDs from the list of expressly accepted identification for voting. Lower federal courts allowed the state to enforce that central prohibition. The fight that reached the Supreme Court was narrower: the law contains a safety valve letting voters prove identity through other means, and Scanlan's guidance barred student IDs from counting even as one factor in that process. A voting rights group, the Coalition for Open Democracy, sued, and the district court blocked the guidance while leaving the law itself in place. The First Circuit declined to intervene, sending the emergency fight to the justices.

Not a Final Ruling

Thursday's order settles the rules for this election only. It is an emergency action, not a ruling on the merits, and the litigation can return after the midterms. For now, New Hampshire voters who arrive without an accepted ID cannot fall back on a student card, full stop.

What It Means for the Senate Race

The stakes run through one of the cycle's closest Senate contests: the open seat left by retiring Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen, where Democratic Representative Chris Pappas faces former Republican Senator John Sununu on November 3. Student voters are a meaningful bloc in a small state with large college towns, and a recent CNN poll found Democrats holding a 31 point advantage among younger adults. Whether the ID rules move turnout enough to matter will only be known on election night, but both parties treated the case as worth an emergency trip to the Supreme Court.

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