Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson publicly broke with the rest of the Supreme Court on Thursday, dissenting alone from an order that allows New Hampshire to block the use of student ID cards in the upcoming midterm elections. The court's other justices relied on the longstanding precedent that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter election rules on the eve of an election, and said the lower courts had not shown that the New Hampshire case warranted an exception.
Jackson rejected that reasoning, writing that the closeness of an election should not stand in the way of applying the law correctly. «I respectfully dissent because — even, and perhaps especially, when an election is looming — I would not disturb a clearly justifiable federal-court order issued to ensure that the public receives accurate information about a State's electoral processes,» she wrote. The order was issued without a full signed opinion, and it is possible that other justices dissented without being named.
The dispute centers on a New Hampshire law signed in April that took effect in June, removing student ID cards from the list of identification forms election officials may accept when a voter requests a ballot. A voting rights group sued the state, arguing the law illegally discriminated against young voters by making it harder for them to cast a ballot. New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan then issued guidance stating that student IDs could not be used to establish voter identity, even as supporting evidence under the state's alternative verification procedures. A district judge blocked that portion of the guidance, finding it went beyond the scope of the law, which only removed student IDs from the list of expressly accepted forms of identification. The Republican National Committee was among the supporters of the guidance.
The ruling lands in a state with several competitive races on Election Day. The Senate contest is rated as leaning Democratic, a slight advantage in a race that could decide control of Congress, while the governor's race is rated as likely going to the GOP. College students typically favor Democrats, though it is unclear how many voters will be affected, since students who previously relied on their student IDs will now need another accepted form of identification. Some Democrats have argued that allowing student IDs at the polls is a positive step; Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico, for instance, has pushed for such a policy in his state.
The dissent fits a pattern for Jackson during her roughly four years on the court, where she has broken from her colleagues in areas including campaign finance, immigration and congressional map litigation. In 2023, she was the lone dissenter in an 8-1 ruling allowing a concrete company to sue striking union workers, and she stood alone in a May 2026 decision involving federal prisoners seeking to challenge their convictions through compassionate release.