Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stood alone as the Supreme Court cleared New Hampshire to ban student IDs for voting days before the midterms, restoring the state’s voter rules over progressive objections.
The High Court on Thursday granted an emergency appeal from New Hampshire Republican Secretary of State David Scanlan and stayed a lower-court injunction that had blocked the state’s student-ID ban. The order lets New Hampshire fully bar school IDs as acceptable identification at the polls for November’s midterm elections, just 12 days out.
Newsweek reported that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole dissenter. The rest of the Court left the state free to enforce its own ballot rules rather than keep a late judicial revise in place.
New Hampshire passed a law earlier this year stating that student IDs are not an acceptable form of identification to get a ballot. After that law took effect, Scanlan barred those IDs from serving as a backup. A federal judge first left the statute alone, then reversed course earlier this month and issued an injunction. That order had stood for almost three weeks when the Supreme Court stepped in.
Both the federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit had denied Scanlan’s request for a stay. The High Court granted it anyway, blocking the injunction and green-lighting the full ban. Students cannot use school IDs as a fallback to cast a ballot under the restored state rule.
Jackson framed her dissent around the timing and around what she called a “clearly justifiable” lower-court order. She wrote that she would not disturb that order even, and perhaps especially, with an election near.
In her dissent, Justice Jackson stated:
"I respectfully dissent because, even, and perhaps especially, when an election is looming, I would not disturb a clearly justifiable federal-court order issued to ensure that the public receives accurate information about a State’s electoral processes."
The Court’s order referenced the Purcell principle, the long-standing caution that federal courts should avoid changing election rules too close to Election Day. The practical effect of Thursday’s stay was to unwind the district judge’s late reversal and put the state’s enacted law back in force for the midterms.
Progressive voting groups cast the outcome as an attack on young voters. The Coalition for Open Democracy, the plaintiff that challenged the ban, called the High Court’s move a mistake that would sow disorder and strip rights.
Legal counsel for the coalition said:
"The Court’s decision grants a stay which both the federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit denied, blocking an injunction that has now been in place for almost three weeks, injecting confusion into the election, precisely what the Purcell principle is supposed to prevent, and authorizing an unconstitutional policy that will deprive young voters of their right to vote."
Counsel added praise for the lone dissent and vowed to keep fighting:
"We applaud Justice Jackson for her dissent, in which she stands for the Constitution, the right to vote, and a rational application of Purcell. We will continue to vigorously litigate this case in the defense of the fundamental right to vote of young voters across New Hampshire."
The sequence matters. Lawmakers passed the student-ID restriction earlier this year. The secretary of state implemented it. A judge later flipped and blocked enforcement weeks before the election. The Supreme Court stayed that injunction so the statute, not the late judicial override, controls who shows what at the polling place.
That is the opposite of a court inventing new rules on the eve of voting. It is a court restoring the rule the elected branches already wrote. Jackson would have kept the district court’s late change in place and left poll workers and voters under an injunction the First Circuit had also left undisturbed until the High Court acted.
Similar dynamics have marked other recent fights over the Court’s direction, including coverage of how Jackson and Sotomayor handled a major climate case and broader debates about the bench’s makeup.
New Hampshire’s political map adds context without changing the legal point. President Donald Trump lost the state to then-Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024. The Cook Political Report has rated the state’s open Senate seat as lean Democrat and the governor’s race as likely Republican. None of that alters the basic question the Court answered: whether a single judge’s late injunction should override a state voter-ID law this close to Election Day.
Harris has separately pushed structural changes aimed at the Court itself, including proposals to expand the Supreme Court and alter the Electoral College. Thursday’s order was narrower. It left New Hampshire’s identification rules intact for November.
Voter ID laws exist so election officials can confirm that the person casting a ballot is the registered voter on the roll. State lawmakers decided a student ID does not meet that standard. Scanlan enforced that judgment. The Supreme Court refused to let a late injunction erase it for the midterms.
Jackson’s dissent treated the lower-court order as a needed guarantee of “accurate information” about electoral processes. The majority’s stay treated the state’s enacted law as the baseline the public already had, and treated the injunction as the disruption that needed pausing. Jackson again stood alone while the Court sided with the state.
Personnel questions around the Court continue in other lanes, from reports and reactions tied to a possible Alito retirement to ongoing fights over how far justices should go in second-guessing state election administration. This order kept the focus on a concrete rule: New Hampshire may require real identification, and a student card is not enough.
The coalition still plans to litigate the merits. For November, the stay controls. Students who want to vote in New Hampshire will need a form of ID the state accepts, not a campus card the legislature already rejected.
Secure elections start with clear rules set by lawmakers, not last-minute judicial revision. The Court enforced that baseline; one justice preferred the revision.
