Opinion ID: 4270945
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Scope of the State’s Liability

Text: The Plaintiffs’ claims, framed as violations of both Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment, attacked the alleged racial disparity in indigent minority voters’ possession of and access to SB 14required photo voter IDs. The Plaintiffs could not condemn the principle of requiring some type of photo ID, a principle upheld by the Supreme Court in Crawford v. Marion Cty. Election Bd., 553 U.S. 181, 191, 128 S. Ct. 1610, 161617 (2008). Nor could Plaintiffs refute that over 95% of all Texas voters, irrespective of race, already possess ID satisfactory under SB 14. Their evidence thus targeted racially disparate indigency, the lack of indigents’ ready access to drivers’ licenses or birth certificates or EICs (“election identity cards”), and the law’s limited exceptions to the photo ID requirement. Aside from expert testimony, 27 Plaintiffs’ witnesses testified to their specific difficulties in complying with SB 14 on these grounds. Whatever the strength of the district court’s renewed finding of purposeful discrimination by the Texas legislature, the discrimination has to be gauged by its impact on indigent minority Texas voters according to the evidence presented at trial. In any discrimination case, the proof of the extent of disparate impact or disparate treatment defines the scope of the defendant’s 10 Case: 17-40884 Document: 00514449897 Page: 11 Date Filed: 04/27/2018 No. 17-40884 liability. Thus focused, we need not review the court’s liability findings because even if we were to affirm, the court’s overreach in its remedial injunction and proceedings was an abuse of discretion meriting reversal.