Supreme Court Upholds Texas Voter ID Law

(CN) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday morning said it will allow Texas to enforce its strict voter identification law in the November election.

Widely described as the nation's strictest voter-identification law, the measure, which was enacted in 2011, requires all Texas voters to come to the polls with one of seven acceptable forms of photo identification.

Texas lawmakers say the law is needed to prevent voter fraud; but critics have argued in a series of legal venues that the requirements disproportionately impact low-income Texans, many of whom are black and Hispanic.

The Supreme Court issued its unsigned decision shortly after 5 a.m. on Saturday morning. It did not explain the reasoning behind its decision.

In a six-page dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said "racial discrimination in elections in Texas is no mere historical artifact," and that in allowing the law to stand her colleagues in the majority were allowing Texas to deny "the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters."

Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor joined the dissent.

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