Texas must pay $6.8 million in legal fees to parties who challenged voter ID law, federal appeals
Source: Texas Tribune
Texas remains responsible for nearly $6.8 million in legal fees and costs owed to the collection of parties who sued over its voter ID law.
Though the state ultimately won the long-winding fight to keep the voter ID law on the books, a panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday upheld a lower court ruling that found the state is on the hook for that sum the last vestige of the legal battle over the 2011 restrictions the state set on what forms of photo identification are accepted at the polls.
The Texas attorney generals office had appealed that lower court ruling, which found the plaintiffs in the litigation Democratic U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey of Fort Worth, individual voters, voting and civil rights groups, the NAACP-Texas and the Texas Houses Mexican American Legislative Caucus, among others were the prevailing parties.
It seems obvious that they are, the 5th Circuit judges on Friday. Plaintiffs successfully challenged the Texas photo ID requirement before our en banc court, and used that victory to secure a court order permanently preventing its enforcement during the elections in 2016 and 2017.
Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2021/09/03/texas-voter-id-lawsuit/
Full title: Texas must pay $6.8 million in legal fees to parties who challenged voter ID law, federal appeals court says
Note that this ruling is in relation to the 2011 voting restrictions and not the restrictions adopted this year.
AllaN01Bear
(17,376 posts)/revision/latest?cb=20090729102006
BumRushDaShow
(127,305 posts)I'm sure they'll keep appealing but hopefully the SCOTUS won't bother. They've already fucked up the VRA as it is...
We had a similar law in place around the same time (2012) and that one was also taken to court (state court) and had a stay put on it a month before the 2012 election so it couldn't be used for that general election. The GOP loons here didn't bother appealing although the original suit eventually got decided in state court 2 years later (in 2014) - https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/01/17/263364689/pennsylvania-voter-id-law-struck-down
The fact that at the time of passage, the ID could be considered a "poll tax" in violation of the 24th Amendment (due to the requirement of getting a copy of a birth certificate, which here and in probably all other states, has a cost involved), provided an impetus to take it to federal court if needed - but the legislature quickly amended the law to drop that requirement, and the law was eventually rendered moot.