Voter ID litigation moving again

From Texas Redistricting last week:

The Texas voter ID litigation geared back up today, with the court setting a number of new or revised deadlines now that the government shutdown is over.

Responses to motions by True the Vote and the Texas Association of Hispanic County Judges and County Commissioners to intervene are now due October 30.

The parties joint discovery plan is now due November 4.

And the court will hold the initial case conference – originally set for October 25 – onNovember 15 at 9:00 a.m. in Corpus Christi.

In addition, the State of Texas advised at this morning’s status conference that it would be filing a motion to dismiss the litigation and that the parties had agreed to the following schedule for briefing the motion:

State’s motion to dismiss due October 25.

Responses from the plaintiffs due November 22.

State’s reply due December 6.

The case had been in limbo due to the shutdown, with the Justice Department asking for a stay early on, and the entire federal court system facing the possibility of running out of funds if it had dragged on much longer. Fortunately, in the end the schedule wasn’t greatly affected, and as you can see things will be moving along pretty quickly. I’ve been assuming all along that the experience of this year’s election will factor into the litigation. I’d been focusing on the number of provisional ballots as one possible piece of evidence, but there will likely be some good stories about unexpected hassles at the ballot box, too. We’ll see how that goes.

On a separate but not unrelated note, the plaintiffs in the voter registration litigation have asked for a full review of the three-judge panel’s refusal to issue an injunction against that law while litigation is ongoing. I doubt they’ll get any relief, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. Whether they’ll then ask SCOTUS for same if the full Fifth Circuit declines is unclear.

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