On September 25, the U.S. Supreme Court said it will hear the Democratic Party’s appeal against the Indiana law requiring voters at the polls to show photo-ID, in order to vote. There are technically two cases, which are combined: Indiana Democratic Party v Rokita, 07-25, and Crawford v Marion County Election Board, 07-21. Both sides on the Indiana case had already filed briefs.

The Court did not say anything today about the Pennsylvania ballot access case, Rogers v Cortes, no. 06-1721. Pennsylvania had not filed a response. The Court almost never takes a case unless it has heard from both sides. If the Court is interested in the Pennsylvania ballot access case, it will ask Pennsylvania to file a response. If the Court has decided to do this, we will find out on October 1. The Court will release most of its September 24 orders on October 1. The only information that the Court released on September 25 are the names of the cases that it definitely decided to hear (also, it refused to hear two particular cases, both of which involve capital punishment). It chose 17 cases. In all 17 cases, the Court had heard from both sides first.