Supreme Court lets New Hampshire bar student IDs as backup voter ID for midterms

New Hampshire passed a law this year that removed student IDs from the expressly accepted forms of voter identification, and the secretary of state then issued guidance barring them as a backup method, CBS News and the AP reported. A federal judge left the law in place but blocked that guidance in early October. The Republican National Committee backed the state's appeal.

The court's brief, unsigned order cited the "Purcell principle" that lower federal courts should ordinarily not change election rules on the eve of an election. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to publicly dissent, writing that an order that left the state rule untouched does not necessarily fall under that principle. New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella called the ruling "an important victory."

Why it matters: The ban on student IDs as a backup now applies to the midterm vote, less than two weeks away, which includes a closely contested U.S. Senate race in New Hampshire.