CLEVELAND, OHIO–Once again, there are big stories out there beyond the security perimeter and the exhausted bomb-squad dogs that have been sweating through their tongues for three days now. For example, on Wednesday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals dealt what amounts to a death blow to Texas's voter-suppression law in its current form. The Court said that the law, which is the most restrictive in the nation as regards to the form of ID required to vote–gun permit, yes; student ID, no–in the state's election is in obvious and blatant violation of those sections of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court left intact when John Roberts declared the Day of Jubilee. Per the Texas Tribune:

The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed previous rulings that the 2011 voter ID law—which stipulates the types of photo identification election officials can and cannot accept at the polls—does not comply with the Voting Rights Act. The full court's ruling delivered the strongest blow yet to what is widely viewed as the nation's strictest voter ID law. Under the law, most citizens (some, like people with disabilities, can be exempt) must show one of a handful of types of identification before their ballots can be counted: a state driver's license or ID card, a concealed handgun license, a U.S. passport, a military ID card, or a U.S citizenship certificate with a photo. Texas is among nine states categorized as requiring "strict photo ID," and its list of acceptable forms is the shortest.

The ruling is significant for a number of reasons beyond the fact that it is a stunning victory for voting-rights advocates. First of all, the Fifth Circuit, based in Louisiana, is notably (nay, famously) conservative. Second, the court thought the case important enough to be heard by the full court. And third, in the opinion, the court made it quite plain they had sharpened Occam's razor on this issue to a very fine edge. Judge Catharina Haynes was quite plain that the Texas legislature should not bring that weak shit into her kitchen anymore. As she wrote in the majority ruling, per the Dallas Morning News:

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.

(This may remind you of the recent jurisprudence on anti-choice legislation that is ostensibly aimed at protecting women's health but which, in reality, is aimed at protecting women from their constitutional right to choose. The federal courts seem to be getting very tired of being asked to judge an endless fashion show of legislative camouflage.)

The people arguing the Texas law now have no good choices. They can bring the law back and try to make it comply with the remnants of the VRA, which they do not want to do, because the whole point of the law was to find a sub rosa way to violate the law in the first place. They can appeal to the Supreme Court, but, thanks to the parliamentary brilliance of Mitch McConnell in the Senate, that venue remains split 4-4, and the odds are almost 100 percent that it would split along those lines on any appeal of the Fifth Circuit's decision, thereby leaving it intact. Consequently, the law will not be in effect during November's election.

The history of the Texas law makes quite clear that Judge Haynes can see a church by daylight. As Ari Berman recounts in the Nation Institute, Haynes is not the first judge to understand exactly what's in play here:

The law was blocked again in September 2014 by another federal district court in Texas. Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos found that 608,470 registered voters in Texas, 4.5 percent of the electorate, did not possess the limited forms of government-issued ID required to cast a ballot, with African-Americans three times as likely as whites to not have a voter-ID, and Hispanics twice as likely. She ruled that the law, known as SB 14, violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which the Supreme Court kept in place.

"It is clear from the evidence," Ramos wrote, "that SB 14 disproportionately impacts African-American and Hispanic registered voters relative to Anglos in Texas…. To call SB 14's disproportionate impact on minorities statistically significant would be an understatement." She called the law "an unconstitutional poll tax" and said it was passed by the Texas legislature "because of and not merely in spite of the voter ID law's detrimental effects on the African-American and Hispanic electorate." Under the law, a handgun permit was considered an acceptable voter ID, but a student ID was not. Texas has had more violations of the VRA over the last twenty-five years than any other state. Obtaining a voter ID in Texas, as Ramos noted, could be far more difficult than one assumes. Voters had to pay for underlying documents to confirm their identity, the cheapest option being a birth certificate for $22, and there are no DMV offices in 81 of 254 counties in Texas, so some voters needed to travel up to 250 miles to the closest location. Counties with a significant Hispanic population are less likely to have a DMV office, while Hispanic residents in such counties are twice as likely as whites to not have the new voter ID (Hispanics in Texas are also twice as likely as whites to not have a car).

Sorry, clever people. You're busted.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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