One court giveth, the other taketh away. On the same day the Supreme Court blocked a Texas abortion law that had been upheld by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, a three-judge panel of the same appellate court at least temporarily lifted a block on the Lone Star State's strict voter ID law, which a federal district judge had struck down as unconstitutional last week.
The Fifth Circuit panel decided that blocking the law so close to the Oct. 20 start of early voting would only confuse state voters and elections officials. "Based primarily on the extremely fast-approaching election date, we stay the district court’s judgment pending appeal," wrote Judge Edith Brown Clement. The ruling was unanimous, though Judge Gregg Costa wrote, in a concurring opinion, that he was "extremely reluctant to have an election take place under a law that a district court has found, and that our court may find, is discriminatory."
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
'Sleaze baack!'Today's Newspapers A roundup of the headlines from the US front pages
-
Quiz of The Week: 20 - 26 AprilPuzzles and Quizzes Have you been paying attention to The Week's news?
-
Humza Yousaf clears the decks to battle no-confidence voteSpeed Read First minister is 'done', according to insider, but a single vote could change the balance
-
ATF finalizes rule to close 'gun show loophole'Speed Read Biden moves to expand background checks for gun buyers
-
Hong Kong passes tough new security lawSpeed Read It will allow the government to further suppress all forms of dissent
-
France enshrines abortion rights in constitutionspeed read It became the first country to make abortion a constitutional right
-
Texas executes man despite contested evidenceSpeed Read Texas rejected calls for a rehearing of Ivan Cantu's case amid recanted testimony and allegations of suppressed exculpatory evidence
-
Supreme Court wary of state social media regulationsSpeed Read A majority of justices appeared skeptical that Texas and Florida were lawfully protecting the free speech rights of users
-
Greece legalizes same-sex marriageSpeed Read Greece becomes the first Orthodox Christian country to enshrine marriage equality in law
-
Trump and his lawyer Alina Habba have a rough day in defamation courtSpeed Read Trump's audible grousing as E. Jean Carroll testified earned him a warning he could be thrown out of court, and Habba showed she 'doesn't know what the hell she's doing'
-
Anders Breivik to testify in prison isolation lawsuit against NorwaySpeed Read Far-right fanatic who killed 77 people in 2011 claims he has received 'inhuman treatment' in custody
