On June 26, Texas Congressman Marc Veasey, who is African-American, and eight other plaintiffs filed a new lawsuit against the Texas photo-ID law for voters at the polls. Veasey v Perry, 2:13-cv-193, southern district. Some of the plaintiffs are voters who lack the approved forms of ID. Others have state ID but the name on the voter’s ID and the name of the voter on the voter registration rolls don’t exactly match and the voter has not been able to resolve the problem.
The Texas law passed in 2011, but it has not yet been implemented, because Texas, as a covered state under the federal Voting Rights Act, had brought a lawsuit (which is permitted under the Voting Rights Act) to persuade a 3-judge court in Washington, D.C., that the Texas law should be pre-cleared. States covered by section 5 of the Voting Rights Act always had the ability to go to court if they didn’t trust the Attorney General of the United States to do a fair job of deciding whether to approve the law.
Texas’ lawsuit had backfired, because the 3-judge court had determined that the photo-ID law would have a racially discriminatory effect. But after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act earlier this week, the Texas Attorney General had announced the law would now be enforced. The new lawsuit is brought under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which covers the entire nation and which was not injured by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Thus, the predictions that the invalidation of Section 4 of the Act would lead to more litigation has already come true.