New Hampshire’s SCOTUS appeal puts student voter ID law in flux

Whether high school and college students in New Hampshire can use their student identification cards to vote on Nov. 3 remains up in the air, after the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office took the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court last week. 

The request, filed by the state Attorney General’s Office Thursday, asks the Supreme Court to reverse an Oct. 2 order by Judge Joseph Laplante of the U.S. District Court of New Hampshire to halt the new law. 

House Bill 323, signed by Gov. Kelly Ayotte in April, removed high school, college and university identification cards from the list of acceptable ways for voters to prove their identity when casting a ballot. 

Under the law, voters are allowed to use a driver’s license (issued by any state), a U.S. passport, a U.S. armed services ID card or any other form of government-issued identification, including a state-issued non-driver’s-license ID card available from a Division of Motor Vehicles location. 

The restriction on student ID cards was in effect for the Sept. 8 primary. However, after the voter advocacy groups Coalition for Open Democracy, League of Women Voters of New Hampshire, and the Forward Foundation sued, Laplante issued a mixed ruling that temporarily allows student IDs to be used in the Nov. 3 election as the case continues. 

The state’s request to the U.S. Supreme Court is an emergency application for stay; if granted, Laplante’s order would be lifted and the student ID ban would take effect on Nov. 3 while the Open Democracy lawsuit continued in the District Court over the next year. 

A day after the New Hampshire Attorney General filed its request, the Republican National Committee filed an amicus brief in support of the state’s effort.

Here’s what to know ahead of the Supreme Court ruling, which had not been issued as of Tuesday afternoon. 

Why did plaintiffs bring the lawsuit?

Open Democracy, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, argues the law is an unconstitutional and unnecessary restriction on a commonly used method of proving identity for high school and college students. 

Some students in New Hampshire may not have easy access to a government ID, the plaintiffs argue; they may not have driver’s licenses or own passports, and college students living on campus may have left their passports at home, the plaintiffs argue. 

Plaintiffs also say the alternative option allowed under the new law — a $20 non-driver’s ID available at the DMV — is a headache for students to obtain. DMV offices require appointments, are located more than 30 minutes away from New Hampshire college campuses, such as the University of New Hampshire in Durham or Dartmouth College, and are often open only during class time hours. 

And plaintiffs argue the new law does not provide enhanced security requirements for identification, because students can use their existing student ID card as proof of identification to obtain the non-driver’s ID from the DMV. 

In their lawsuit, lawyers for the plaintiffs say the new law violates the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18, the First Amendment, and the 14th Amendment, which the courts have interpreted to establish voting rights.

Specifically, plaintiffs argue the state’s reasons for enforcing the law are not strong enough to justify the burden the law will impose on voting — a test known as the Anderson-Burdick framework. 

That balancing test is a popular tool for plaintiffs fighting more restrictive voting laws. It was used by U.S. District Judge Samantha Elliott to strike down another New Hampshire voting law in May, House Bill 1569, which required strict proof of citizenship in order to vote. The state has appealed that decision. 

However, when it comes to voter ID laws, the Anderson-Burdick test could face an uphill battle. The Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that Indiana’s voter ID requirements did not violate the balancing test, in the landmark 6-3 decision in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board. That case did not explore prohibitions on student ID cards. 

What is the state’s defense of the law?

The state argues HB 323 is a legitimate attempt by the Legislature and governor to maintain secure and efficient elections. 

They argue that student identification cards are less reliable and less secure than government-issued ID cards because they don’t have expiration dates and could allow students to use them years after they have already graduated. 

Attorneys for the state also noted that many school ID cards lack anti-counterfeiting features like holograms and ultraviolet markings. 

The state also challenged the standing of Open Democracy to bring the lawsuit, arguing that they were not likely to suffer a legally sufficient “concrete injury” as a result of the lawsuit. 

How did Judge Laplante rule?

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In his Oct. 2 order, Laplante gave plaintiffs a mixed result. He did not appear to agree with the plaintiffs’ constitutional arguments — at least not enough to issue a preliminary injunction.

“HB 323 did one specific thing: it removed student ID cards from the forms of identification that are expressly valid to obtain a ballot,” Laplante wrote. “The legislature made that choice, and the court upholds it at this preliminary stage because the plaintiff has not demonstrated a likelihood of proving that it is unconstitutional.”

However, Laplante agreed with plaintiffs on a different issue. In April, the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s Office issued guidance to election officials stating that they should not allow New Hampshire residents to register to vote using a high school or college ID card. That guidance was wrong, Laplante noted; the new law signed by Ayotte that month barred student ID cards only for identity when casting a ballot, not when registering. 

Thus, Laplante wrote, even though the plaintiffs had not established that the law is unconstitutional, the confusion caused by that incorrect guidance justifies a pause on full enforcement of the new law on Election Day next month. 

“The Secretary of State is therefore ordered to issue, as soon as practicable, revised guidance for the November 2026 general election clarifying that, although student identification cards are no longer expressly valid to establish voter identity under RSA 659:13, election officials may consider them, along with other available evidence, when determining voter identity under RSA 654:12(d)(4) and RSA 659:13(c)(1) and (3),” Laplante wrote.

What is the state’s emergency argument to the Supreme Court? 

In short, the Attorney General’s Office argues Laplante’s order came too close to Election Day, and that freezing the new law at this point will cause voter confusion and disrupt management of the elections next month.

To make that argument, the state is invoking the “Purcell principle,” a rule-of-thumb established in a 2006 Supreme Court case that federal courts should not issue decisions that change election rules too close to an election.

In this case, the Secretary of State’s Office has already updated and distributed its Election Procedure Manual to local officials, and Laplante’s order requires the office to inform all election officials to ignore portions of that manual as they prepare for Election Day, the state argues. 

The state is also arguing to the Supreme Court that it will likely prevail on the merits when the lawsuit gets a full hearing in U.S. District Court, and that the state would face “irreparable harm” should the law not go into effect Nov. 3, two requirements to obtain any emergency stay of this nature.

“Re-educating local election officials and the public in a short time is practically impossible and risks voter confusion and inconsistent application of law, if not voter disenfranchisement,” the Attorney General’s Office argued Thursday. 

In a reply to the Supreme Court filed Monday, attorneys for Open Democracy say the Purcell principle supports leaving the ruling in place, not overturning it. They noted that Secretary of State Dave Scanlan already issued updated guidance the day after Laplante’s ruling this month to reflect that election officials may accept a student ID alongside other evidence at the polls. 

“The Secretary’s revised guidance is now the status quo,” the plaintiffs argued Monday. “A stay wouldn’t preserve it. It would reverse the rules for a second time in a month.”

How have federal courts handled challenges to student ID bans in other states?

This case is untested territory – New Hampshire’s case is the first involving a ban on student identification to vote to reach the U.S. Supreme Court. And though the court is acting on an emergency request for stay — and will thus not issue a binding decision — its decision could provide a window into further rulings. 

New Hampshire is one of 36 states that require voters to provide identification at the polls, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The Granite State adopted a voter-ID law in 2012, after the Legislature overrode Democratic Gov. John Lynch’s veto. 

And with its law this year, New Hampshire became one of 11 states not to allow student identification to be used to prove identity. Other states include Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Caroline, Tennessee and Texas. The Florida Legislature has also passed a law repealing student ID use, but it will not take effect until January 2027.

But there are some recent cases to keep in mind. 

Outside of New Hampshire, three states have been sued over their laws barring student identification for voter identification, and plaintiffs have so far been unsuccessful. 

In Idaho, the League of Women Voters and the advocacy group BABE VOTE attempted to overturn that state’s ban on student IDs for voting, but the Idaho Supreme Court upheld the laws in April 2024.

In Tennessee, a federal district court dismissed a lawsuit in 2015 brought by the Nashville Student Organizing Committee and other organizations against its law; the court found that students are not a protected class under the 14th Amendment and that the requirement that non-drivers obtain an alternative identification was not a substantial burden on voting.

Today, the only ongoing federal lawsuit similar to New Hampshire’s is in Indiana. In May 2025, an Indiana University student and two advocacy groups, Count US IN and Women4Change Indiana, sued in federal court to challenge the state’s 2025 student ID ban, arguing it amounted to a “surgical attack on young voters,” and violates the First, 14th, and 26th Amendments. 

Yet despite the lawsuit, Indiana’s law is set to take effect Nov. 3. A federal district court blocked the law in April, but the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that block that same month. The case is scheduled for oral argument Oct. 27.