Free Republic

AUSTIN, Texas – A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Texas' strict voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act and ordered changes before the November election. ADVERTISEMENT The ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals instructs a lower court to make changes that fix the "discriminatory effect" of the 2011 law, but to do so in a way that disrupts this year's election season as little as possible. President Barack Obama's administration took the unusual step of deploying the weight of the U.S. Justice Department into the case when it challenged the law, which requires Texas residents...

Texas’s voter ID law violates federal laws prohibiting electoral discrimination, an appeals court ruled Wednesday. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the 2011 state law, widely viewed as the one of the nation’s strictest such requirements, ruling that it violates section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. "The record shows that drafters and proponents of SB 14 were aware of the likely disproportionate effect of the law on minorities, and that they nonetheless passed the bill without adopting a number of proposed ameliorative measures that might have lessened this impact," Judge Catharina Haynes wrote in the ruling.

A measure that would require utilities to receive one-third of their power from renewable energy sources by 2020 passed off the Senate floor Tuesday with the bare minimum of 21 votes. The bill, SB 14 by Sen. Joe Simitian, D-San Jose, has been tagged as a top priority for Senate leader Darrel Steinberg. The bill’s passage was the first major policy decision in which Steinberg muscled a proposal out of his house, despite reservations from many within his own party. When Steinberg took the leadership gavel in December, he noted three top legislative priorities that could give the Legislature “a...