The U.S. Supreme Court late Thursday blocked Wisconsin from enforcing its strict voter identification law in November’s election.
By a 6-3 vote, the justices granted an emergency appeal from civil rights lawyers, who argued it was too late to put the rule into effect this year.
Lawyers for the ACLU noted that the state had already sent out thousands of absentee ballots without mentioning the need for voters to return a copy of their photo identification.
At nearly the same time, a federal judge in Texas struck down that state’s new voter ID law on the grounds that it violated the constitutional right to vote and discriminated against racial minorities.
Texas Atty. Gen. Gregg Abbott said the state would appeal.
The Wisconsin and Texas cases were the two most closely watched tests of new voter rules this year. In both states, Republican-led legislatures sought to tighten the rules for voting and to require all registered voters who did not have a driver’s license to obtain a photo ID card at a state motor vehicles office.
