MADISON, Wis. (CN) — A decision from a Wisconsin federal judge on Thursday fell on the side of state laws restricting the use of college students’ campus IDs for voting, again frustrating left-leaning voting rights advocates in their fight to loosen voting laws in the Badger State.
Common Cause and its Wisconsin chapter alleged in their 2019 lawsuit against the six sitting members and administrator of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission that some of the state’s legal requirements for the use of college and university students’ campus IDs as voter IDs were “unnecessary and irrational” and violated both the U.S. Constitution and federal voting rights statutes.
The watchdog groups specifically challenged state requirements that in order to be used to vote, a student ID must display the student’s signature, an issuance date, and an expiration date, the last of which cannot be more than two years after the issuance date, essentially giving the IDs a two-year lifespan. Wisconsin, they say, is the only state where the latter is law.
The National Conference of State Legislatures says 35 states have some kind of voter ID law on the books, and the Campus Vote Project says 28 states permit campus ID as voter ID but the laws vary.
While U.S. District Judge James Peterson’s 15-page opinion identified reasonable arguments in the plaintiffs’ complaint, the judge felt the challenged laws cleared the necessary constitutional and statutory hurdles to remain in place.
“Plaintiffs question the usefulness of an expiration date, an issuance date, and a signature, and they make many good points,” Peterson said. “If the question were whether the requirements at issue were likely to advance an important state interest, the court might well conclude that they don’t. But that isn’t the standard.”
In order to outlast the advocacy group’s constitutional and statutory challenges, the ID requirements only had to be “rationally related to a legitimate governmental interest” and “material to determining whether an individual is qualified to vote under Wisconsin law,” respectively, according to the judge’s decision.
“The court concludes that the challenged requirements meet both of those relatively lenient standards,” Peterson said.
The Barack Obama appointee continued that because the requirements are commonplace for others among the 10 types of identification acceptable for voting in Wisconsin, the group could not prove those requirements discriminated against students. The requirements are rational for student IDs in particular, Peterson opined, in part because they can vary from school to school since they are not regulated by federal, state or tribal law.
“Under these circumstances, it would be rational for the legislature to conclude that statutorily imposed uniformity was appropriate for student IDs—to discourage use of fake IDs and assist election workers in recognizing valid IDs,” the judge said.
Peterson’s ruling granted summary judgment to the state elections board defendants, denied the plaintiffs' motion for the same and instructed the clerk to close the case.
In an emailed statement on Thursday, Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, said the group was disappointed in the decision but that it was not altogether unexpected.
Heck pointed out that many public and private institutions issue photo IDs that do not square with the state’s requirements, which forces some students to get an additional photo ID just to vote.
“Such a burden seemed unfair and not providing that student the equal protection under the law that the Constitution provides,” Heck said. “So we wanted to help provide relief for those students and sought to make it so that all photo IDs issued to students at all public and private institutions would suffice for the purpose of being able to vote. Judge Peterson said no.”
Two attorneys representing Common Cause, one from a Madison-based firm and one with the Fair Elections Center in Washington, did not immediately respond to requests for further comment on Thursday.
Efforts from left-leaning activists in Wisconsin to curb the Republican-controlled Legislature’s restrictions on voting over the last decade have yielded a mixed bag of results. A major ruling from the Seventh Circuit last year on a raft of election laws was mostly a win for conservatives who have tried to place a wide variety of limitations on voting, with a few concessions for liberals resisting those laws.
The two consolidated cases subject to the appeals panel’s decision are scheduled for a trial to settle remaining issues—including over rules governing a process by which voters who cannot obtain essential documents required to vote can petition the state for an exception to those rules—in Peterson’s court in Madison starting Feb. 10.
Before the Seventh Circuit ruled otherwise, Peterson enjoined many of the contested Republican laws, which also included those limiting early voting, in 2016. He did so again when GOP lawmakers tried to enact different versions of those laws a couple years later under lame-duck legislation that curtailed many of the powers of then-newly elected Governor Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul, both Democrats.
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