Federal appeals court sides with Texas on ID requirements for voting by mail

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A federal appeals court has upheld Texas’ requirement that potential voters must list their identification information in their application for a mail-in ballot.

In Texas, voting by mail is only available for certain groups of people, including elderly voters and people with disabilities. Under Senate Bill 1 passed in 2021, voters must also include an ID number — such as a driver’s license number — on both the vote-by-mail applications and the mail-in ballots and both numbers need to match. Opponents of the law said this provision discriminated against voters with disabilities and that it would not meaningfully cut down on voter fraud.

In a Monday ruling, a panel from the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the updated requirement does not violate federal law. It also reversed a lower court’s decision.

“We have no difficulty concluding that this ID number requirement fully complies with a provision of federal law known by the parties as the materiality provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” wrote Judge James Ho, a Trump appointee.

Judge Patrick Higginbotham and Judge Don Willett, who were appointed under the Reagan and Trump administrations, respectively, joined Ho’s ruling.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton lauded the ruling Tuesday.

“Voter ID is one of the most crucial tools in the battle against election fraud, and I’m pleased to see the court affirm our fundamental right to defend the integrity of our democratic process,” he said in a news release.

Prior to this decision, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas had ruled in 2023 that the requirements infringed on the Civil Rights Act. Though later that year, Paxton’s office was able to stop that decision from going into effect.

These voter ID requirements were also the target of legal challenges from several civil rights groups, along with other provisions of SB 1.

Following the Monday ruling, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas said its legal team is continuing to evaluate its options for a possible appeal.

“We are disappointed that the court permitted these flawed ID matching requirements to remain in place for voting by mail,” Ashley Harris, a staff attorney for ACLU Texas, said in a statement Wednesday.

“In each election since S.B.1 was implemented, we have seen the continuous and arbitrary rejection of thousands of mail ballots due to this burdensome and unnecessary requirement. These rejections will continue to affect scores of eligible voters, and their disenfranchisement only weakens our democracy.”

A recent study from the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School found that the state’s requirements pushed many voters whose mail ballots or vote-by-mail applications were rejected during the 2022 primary to change their method — or not vote at all.

Disclosure: League of Women Voters of Texas has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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