Texas voter ID fight returning to federal court The feds have no right to bar implementation, Texas will tell federal judges

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott argues the state has a responsibility to act: "I know for a fact that voter fraud is real, that it must be stopped." Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott argues the state has a responsibility to act: "I know for a fact that voter fraud is real, that it must be stopped." Photo: Harry Cabluck Photo: Harry Cabluck Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Texas voter ID fight returning to federal court 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

WASHINGTON — The decades-old legal battle between states' rights and civil rights returns to a familiar venue - a federal courtroom - on Monday as lawyers for the state of Texas try to convince a panel of judges that the U.S. Justice Department has no legal authority to block the state from immediately implementing a voter ID law.

Civil rights groups contend that Texas' 2011 law requiring voters to provide identification with a photo issued by the state or the military discriminates against minority citizens and violates the federal Voting Rights Act. They say it harkens back to state laws designed to disenfranchise minorities, such as poll taxes and literacy tests.

"The effort to suppress the vote is not a new thing," said Leon W. Russell, vice chairman of the NAACP Board of Directors. "What we've seen in the last two years, though, is the most egregious effort to compound and collect every single method that anybody could think of that would discourage a person to vote and put it in a piece of legislation and inflict it on our community."

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott argues that the state has a responsibility to guard against election fraud, and that its new law is not subject to Justice Department review under Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. That provision, which has angered Southern conservatives for decades, requires jurisdictions with a historical pattern of discrimination to win federal "pre-clearance" from the Justice Department or a federal court in Washington, D.C., before implementing changes in voting laws or political lines.

Southern states, led by Alabama, have argued that Section 5 is a violation of states' rights. Texas Republicans have charged that President Barack Obama's Justice Department has manipulated its powers under the Voting Rights Act to benefit Democrats.

"Instead of attacking Texas for enforcing the law, the Department of Justice should learn from the Lone Star State and focus its resources on protecting the integrity of the electoral system nationwide," said Republican U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, of Humble.

50 vote fraud cases

More Information By the numbers 31: States require voters to show ID at the polls. 15: Of those states require photo ID.

Thirty-one states require voters to show identification at the polls, including 15 that require photo ID. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of states to require identification cards in a 2008 Indiana case, but the Justice Department has rebuffed laws in two states covered by the Voting Rights Act, Texas and South Carolina. New ID laws in Mississippi and Florida are awaiting Justice Department action.

While the National Conference of State Legislatures, which tracks voter ID laws, reports there is little evidence to bolster claims of voter fraud or discrimination, Abbott cites 50 election fraud convictions in Texas and more than 100 defendants prosecuted by the Department of Justice in the past decade.

"I know for a fact that voter fraud is real, that it must be stopped, and that voter ID is one way to prevent cheating at the ballot box and ensure integrity in the electoral system," Abbott said in an interview. "It's time for politics to be put aside and allow the Texas voter ID law to be put into effect, just like similar laws that exist across the country."

The current legal battle is the 24th time Texas has sued the federal government since Abbott took office in 2004. The disputes have ranged from environmental enforcement to education mandates. Texas Gov. Rick Perry made states' rights a central plank in his platform during his unsuccessful 2012 campaign for president.

Texas' legal challenge has drawn strong opposition from civil rights leaders, who argue that the Texas law was designed to reduce voting participation by minorities, young voters and the elderly, who are less likely to have acceptable identification cards. They note that the law was written to allow voters to use a concealed gun permit as an acceptable form of identification, but not ID cards from universities or colleges.

"Texas' discriminatory photo ID measure demonstrates why, in the face of persisting obstacles for minority voters, the Voting Rights Act is still necessary," said Natasha Korgaonkar, an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which is representing African-American students from Texas Southern University and Prairie View A&M University, among others.

'Purely political'

State Rep. Joaquin Castro, a San Antonio Democrat, dismisses the law as a "purely political" move by Texas Republicans to disenfranchise Democratic voting groups. The law is "unnecessary," he added, because proponents of the legislation "have never been able to provide widespread voter fraud."

"It's purely an electoral strategy for the Republican party to preserve their political power," Castro said.

'Conflict of interest'

The protracted legal battle over Texas' voter ID law resumes Monday at the federal courthouse in Washington. Adding to the heightened tension around the case is sharp conservative criticism of the Justice Department for using the data firm Catalist, a firm with strong Democratic ties, to analyze the impact of the ID law. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, joined with Poe last week in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder calling the use of a Democratic firm "unacceptable" and a "conflict of interest."

Texas is among several states challenging the Justice Department's authority to deny pre-clearance under Section 5. Among the other states that have filed suit against the Voting Rights Act was Alabama, which challenged Section 5 in May. The district court rejected Alabama's challenge, with U.S. Appeals Court Judge David Tatel writing that Congress properly enacted the Voting Rights Act to end discrimination in voting, which he called "one of the greatest evils."

Tatel is a member of the three-judge panel that will hear the Texas voter photo ID case.

Priya Anand of the Washington bureau and Joe Holley in Houston also contributed to this report.

richard.dunham@chron.com

elizabeth.traynor@chron.com