Supreme Court rules New Hampshire can ban use of student IDs for midterm voters

October 22, 2026 / 7:53 PM EDT / CBS/AP

The Supreme Court cleared the way Thursday for New Hampshire to fully ban the use of student IDs for voting during the midterm elections.

The justices granted a Republican-backed emergency appeal and blocked the use of student IDs as a backup method of identification.

New Hampshire passed a law this year that said student IDs would no longer be an expressly accepted form of identification for obtaining a ballot. The secretary of state then issued guidance barring them as a backup way to prove a voter's identity.

A judge left the law in place but blocked the guidance in early October, prompting the appeal to the Supreme Court. The Republican National Committee weighed in to support the state.

In its brief one-paragraph decision, the Supreme Court invoked the longstanding "Purcell principle," quoting a previous 2020 decision that stated that the high court "has repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election."

The decision was unsigned. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to publicly dissent from the ruling, arguing that the Purcell principle did not necessarily apply in this…

Original source: https://www.cbsnews.com/entertainment/