Supreme Court declines to revive Kansas voter registration ID law

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by Kansas' secretary of state to bring back a law that required people to show physical documentation of citizenship in order to register to vote.

Under the law, a person had to show a birth certificate, passport, or other document before they could register. In April, the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals declared this law, the only one like it in the country, unconstitutional. Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab (R) appealed the case to the Supreme Court, despite objections from Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D).

Former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) was a proponent of the law, which was in place for three years and kept about 30,000 people from registering to vote, The Associated Press reports. A state government expert estimated that nearly all of those people were U.S. citizens eligible to vote.

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Dale Ho, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Voting Rights Project, argued the case against Schwab's team. He told AP that the Supreme Court's decision to not review the case will "finally close this chapter on Kris Kobach's sorry legacy of voter suppression."