Appeals Court Rules Against Voter ID Law (2 years ago same court ruled for it)

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit struck down voter ID requirements currently being challenged in Texas in a ruling Wednesday. In a 9-6 decision, the court ruled that the law had a discriminatory effect on minorities, a decision that will likely put this issue before the Supreme Court in the 2017 term. This makes the third straight court to rule against the Texas law; a Supreme Court decision in this case could have a national impact when it comes to requiring voters to show ID.

According to the law’s detractors, the Texas requirements would have stopped more than half a million residents from voting. The court said that the law itself was not intended to keep certain voters out of the ballot booth, but that the effects themselves were still unfair.

“The district court must ensure that any remedy enacted ameliorates discriminatory effect, while respecting the legislature’s stated objective to safeguard the integrity of elections by requiring more secure forms of voter identification,” read the ruling.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton quickly released a statement condemning the verdict. “Preventing voter fraud is essential to accurately reflecting the will of Texas voters during elections and it is unfortunate that this common-sense law, providing protections against fraud, was not upheld in its entirety,” Paxton said.

As with all political issues, you have to wade through a lot of partisan smoke to get to anything resembling the truth. Democrats accuse Republicans of crafting these laws just to keep minorities from voting. Republicans accuse Democrats of trying to commit voter fraud. And so the wheel turns.

Are there Republican legislatures trying to get one over on minority voters? Who can say? But until that is proven in a court of law, it’s an irresponsible accusation.

Even if that could be proven, however, it wouldn’t make voter ID requirements any less sensible or any more racially discriminatory. There is nothing about a person’s skin color that makes it more difficult to get a driver’s license, and that will still be true no matter how many judges declare otherwise. ID is a simple, effective way to reduce fraud and instill confidence in our election system. If blacks and other minorities are having a tough time getting identification, let’s address that as a separate issue.

This is how an evil central socialist government and their allies our convoluted system of courts usurp our so-called freedoms. A person's eligibility to vote must be assured by showing who he or she or it is.

Rob Waddell said:

Hillary, hated Bill's brother the cocaine dealer, but she played nice because Roger, was getting her her cocaine! People on the left don't care that Hillery is responsible for the four deaths in Benghazi, they don't care about the fact that her, and Obama were arming Islamic terrorists in Libya, they don't care about the murder of Justice Scalia, the list of people the Clintons have had killed, the fact that Bill Clinton has forced sexual acts on many women, they don't care about Hillary lying under oath, they don't care about Obama being a fraud, and they are too stupid to see their lives will be forever negatively altered by the results of the America that is coming down the road if Mr. Trump isn't elected!

SO WHAT, TELL THE INFERIOR COURT TO GO POUND SAND!!!

A recent detailed study of the courts of all 50 states and the District of Columbia determined that 46 states and the District of Columbia adopt the position that the precedents of lower federal courts are not binding in their jurisdictions. Wayne A. Logan, A House Divided: When State and Lower Federal Courts Disagree on Federal Constitutional Rights, 90 Notre Dame L. Rev. 235, 280-81 (2014). The position of three other states is uncertain. Only one state (Delaware) defers to the constitutional decisions of lower federal courts. Id. At 281.

Federal courts have recognized that state-court review of constitutional questions is independent of the same authority lodged in the lower federal courts. “In passing on federal constitutional questions, the state courts and the lower federal courts have the same responsibility and occupy the same position; there is a parallelism but not paramountcy for both sets of courts are governed by the same reviewing authority of the Supreme Court.” United States ex rel.Lawrence v. Woods, 432 F.2d 1072, 1075 (7th Cir. 1970).

Although consistency between state and federal courts is desirable in that it promotes respect for the law and prevents litigants from forum-shopping, there is nothing inherently offensive about two sovereigns reaching different legal conclusions. Indeed, such results were contemplated by our federal system, and neither sovereign is required to, nor expected to, yield to the other.

Surrick v. Killion, 449 F. 3d 520, 535 (3rd Cir. 2006).

The United States Supreme Court has acknowledged that state courts “possess the authority, absent a provision for exclusive federal jurisdiction, to render binding judicial decisions that rest on their own interpretations of federal law.” Asarco Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U.S. 605, 617 (1989). Two justices of the United States Supreme Court in special writings have elaborated on this principle.

The Supremacy Clause demands that state law yield to federal law, but neither federal supremacy nor any other principle of federal law requires that a state court’s interpretation of federal law give way to a (lower) federal court’s interpretation. In our federal system, a state trial court’s interpretation of federal law is no less authoritative than that of the federal court of appeals in whose circuit the trial court is located.

Lockhart v. Fretwell, 506 U.S. 364, 375-76 (1993) (Thomas, J., concurring). See also Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U.S. 452, 482, n. 3 (1974) (Rehnquist, J., concurring) (noting that a lower- federal-court decision “would not be accorded the stare decisis effect in state court that it would have in a subsequent proceeding within the same federal jurisdiction. Although the state court would not be compelled to follow the federal holding, the opinion might, of course, be viewed as highly persuasive.”).

For the above reasons, I am of the opinion that an Alabama probate judge may deliver his own considered opinion, subject to review, on the issues raised in Searcy and Strawser and is not required to defer to federal district and circuit court rulings on the same questions.

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