Texas Says It Will Appeal Ruling Weakening Its Voter ID Law To SCOTUS

Texas has decided that it will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review a major appeals court ruling against its voter ID law.

“To protect the integrity of voting in the State of Texas, our office will appeal the Voter ID ruling of the Fifth Circuit to the United States Supreme Court,” Marc Rylander, a spokesman for state Attorney General Ken Paxton, said in a statement Tuesday.

The decision, initially reported by the Dallas Morning News, comes after the state agreed to soften its law for November’s elections. A spokesperson for Paxton’s office declined to comment to TPM on when the appeal would be would filed, and did not respond to a question about whether Paxton’s office would ask the Supreme Court to put the law back in place for November’s election.

The full Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in July that Texas’ 2011 voter ID law had the effect of discriminating against minority voters. The court sent the case back down to the district court level in order for the state and its challengers to hash out a remedy for November’s election. A district court judge last week approved an agreement in which voters who did not have the photo IDs required by the law would be able to vote, if they showed certain other forms of ID and signed an declaration saying they faced a reasonable impediment to attaining the required IDs.

At the time of the agreement, Paxton’s office had suggested the state was still weighing a Supreme Court appeal and characterized the agreement as just an “interim remedy.”