The Arizona Legislature, along with 19 other states, submitted an amicus curiae brief at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last week supporting Idaho’s voter ID law, which prohibits student ID cards as an acceptable form of identification for voting. A lower court judge appointed by former President Joe Biden, Amanda K. Brailsford, already ruled in favor of the law, stating that the plaintiffs in March for Our Lives Idaho v. McGrane, which included both March For Our Lives Idaho and the Idaho Alliance for Retired Americans, failed to show proof of discrimination against youth voters.
The Idaho State Supreme Court also rejected a state law challenge in a unanimous decision.
“Every state has an absolute right to implement voter ID laws through its Legislature,” State Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Mesa) said in a statement. “Arizona has been at the forefront of this movement to ensure the integrity of our elections’ process through the requirement that citizens must produce voter ID when registering and when appearing to vote. Prevention is better than prosecution.”
“Arizona is proud to stand with Idaho and any state that chooses to enact reasonable protections like voter ID,” said House Speaker Steve Montenegro (R-Glendale). “Student IDs vary widely in design and security features. States have every right to require more reliable documentation to ensure only eligible voters are casting ballots. Arizona’s election laws are under constant attack by activists who want to chip away at basic security measures. If we don’t fight back, we risk undermining public confidence in our elections,” Speaker Montenegro added. “Every eligible voter should be able to vote — and every illegal vote must be prevented.”
HB 124 limited what photo ID was acceptable for in-person voting to a driver’s license, ID card issued by the state transportation agency, a passport or other government-issued photo ID, a tribal identification card with a photo, or a license to carry concealed weapons. HB 340 limited what photo ID was acceptable for voter registration, and added proof of residency requirements for those who register using a passport or government-issued ID. It also expanded an option for voters to obtain a “no-fee” ID through the Idaho Department of Transportation to everyone 18 or older.
The plaintiffs, who were represented by Perkins Coie, claimed that the new photo ID laws violated the U.S. Constitution’s 26th Amendment by discriminating against youth voters and the Equal Protection Clause by imposing new requirements on new voter registrants compared to existing voters.
The Arizona Legislature’s brief emphasized that the Constitution gives the states “broad authority … to preemptively protect their electoral structures from fraud, illegal votes by ineligible individuals, and other unlawful activity, ‘without waiting for it to occur and be detected within [their] own borders,’” citing case law including an Arizona case, Brnovich v. DNC. In that opinion, the Supreme Court upheld Arizona’s law against ballot harvesting.
The amicus curiae brief referenced other case law which held that “States are ‘not required to show’ that reasonable and nondiscriminatory voting laws are ‘narrowly tailored — that is, the one best tailored to achieve its purposes.’”
They noted that numerous states “condition voter registration and/or access to the ballot on the furnishing of valid proof of identity” and those states “differ in denoting precisely how and in what manner voters can adequately establish their identities.” Due to “reasonable concerns that student IDs are highly variable in their content and security, the Idaho Legislature determined that they are not a sufficiently reliable method of establishing identity when registering to vote.”
The Idaho State Supreme Court in its opinion analyzing case law that “strict scrutiny review was inapplicable to the House Bills under an equal protection analysis,” so “the ‘rational basis’ test is applicable to the House Bills and, like the district court, conclude that “[t]he new laws are rationally related to their stated purpose to clarify and create uniformity, by requiring only generally-accepted, authentic and reliable forms of identification as a reasonable condition to exercise the right of suffrage.”
Brailsford said in her opinion, “Plaintiffs’ argument that House Bill 340 violates the Equal Protection Clause because it discriminates “against new registrants compared with existing voters” fails otherwise because “new registrants” and “existing voters” are not similarly situated. Rather existing voters have already registered to vote. … The Fourteenth Amendment does not require disparate groups to be treated the same. … For this reason and because House Bill 340 advances important interests, its minimal burden is not unconstitutional.”
Thirty-six states require proof of identification to cast a vote, and 21 require a photo ID. An ID is also required to register to vote in 28 of the 36 states that offer online registration.
Of these 36 states, Wyoming only requires an ID to register by form. Only Nevada and New Mexico require an ID for same-day early voting, and only Nevada and Wyoming require ID for election day registration.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter / X. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Vote Here Sign” by Lorie Shaull. CC BY 2.0.
