CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (CN) – The Trump administration urged a federal judge this week not to block Texas’ new voter ID law from taking effect because it codifies remedies suggested by the Fifth Circuit, the same court that found the state’s previous law disenfranchised minority voters.
Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 5 on June 1 and it might go on the books on January 1, 2018.
The bill’s fate is in the hands of U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzalez.
She will consider whether to block it as requested by legal challengers who claim SB5 maintains the same “picking and choosing of ‘acceptable’ photo IDs” as the state’s former voter ID law, Senate Bill 14.
The Texas Legislature passed SB14 along party lines in 2011 with Republicans in the majority saying it was needed to crack down on in-person voter fraud.
Texas and the Justice Department claim that SB5 adequately broadens voter access by letting people bring a voter registration certificate, a current utility bill, or a birth certificate, among other documents, to the polls and sign a reasonable impediment affidavit stating why they couldn’t get acceptable photo ID.
In a brief filed on Wednesday, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights division says SB5 should stand because it incorporates changes the Fifth Circuit said would bring the state’s photo ID law into compliance with the Voting Rights Act.
According to the feds, the Fifth Circuit in a July 2016 ruling “invited the Texas Legislature to adopt a ‘legislative fix,’” and suggested Texas look into reasonable impediment declarations to address people who don’t have proper photo ID, similar to measures adopted by North Carolina and Indiana.
The feds’ brief adds that SB5 is a good solution because it extends the cut-off period for acceptable photo identification to four years past the expiration date, as opposed to SB14, which didn’t allow IDs that had been expired for more than six months.
The changes are taken from an interim order Gonzales Ramos put in place for the November 2016 elections, but there are some key differences between SB5 and the interim order.
Under SB5, anyone who makes a false statement on the declaration can be prosecuted for perjury, and it increases the penalty from a Class B misdemeanor, to a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine.
“Members of minority groups who have been repeatedly victimized by official discrimination to stop them from voting are likely to feel intimidated by this process,” plaintiffs’ attorney Danielle Lang wrote in a brief filed on Wednesday.
Lang works for the Campaign Legal Center – a nonpartisan nonprofit in Washington that represented the plaintiffs who successfully challenged SB14 in court – Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, the NAACP, the League of United Latin American Citizens and others.
She filed the brief for “private plaintiffs,” six Texas residents and La Union Del Pueblo Entero Inc., a community-activist group founded by the late worker-rights advocate César Chávez.