Supreme Court blocks Wisconsin from implementing voter ID law

(Image credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

last updated 8 January 2015

Late Thursday night, the Supreme Court blocked Wisconsin from putting into effect the state's voter ID law.

Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas all dissented, saying the court cannot block an appeals court ruling unless the lower court "clearly and demonstrably erred in its application of accepted standards," USA Today reports.

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That decision was reversed in September by a three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. The ACLU and the Advancement Project said the law could affect 300,000 residents — primarily racial minorities, students, seniors, and people with disabilities — who do not have a proper form of ID, and in their petition to the Supreme Court said the requirement "will cause chaos at the polls and will disenfranchise many thousands of Wisconsin voters."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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