The law in question, known as Senate Bill 14, imposed voter-ID requirements on Texas voters when it was signed by then-Texas Governor Rick Perry in May 2011. But a federal court blocked the law from going into effect soon thereafter, ruling that Texas hadn’t proved the law lacked a racially discriminatory purpose or effect. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act required certain jurisdictions, including Texas, to receive federal approval for changes to voting laws before enacting them. Critics argued the law would leave thousands of poorer voters, many of them from African American and Hispanic communities, without the means to cast a ballot.

SB 14 lay dormant until June 2013, when a Supreme Court decision helped revive it. In a sharply divided 5-4 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, the Court struck down the formula in Section 4 that determined which jurisdictions fell under Section 5’s preclearance requirements. With that formula gone, Section 5 became inoperative. Texas officials announced a few hours after the ruling that they would enforce SB 14.

A group of Texas voters then challenged SB 14 under a different part of the Voting Rights Act that forbids racial discrimination in voting laws nationwide. That provision, known as Section 2, is a weaker alternative to preclearance. Section 5 required state officials to prove the absence of discriminatory intent or effect when crafting new election laws—an extremely high threshold for those jurisdictions. Section 2 instead places the burden to prove racial discrimination or effect on voters themselves.

But the challenge succeeded despite the higher threshold. In October 2014, a federal district court in Corpus Christi ruled that SB 14 had both a discriminatory intent and effect against African-American and Hispanic voters, violating Section 2. Texas then appealed the decision to the Fifth Circuit, where a three-judge panel upheld the lower court’s finding of discriminatory effect in August 2015.

An en banc review of the panel’s decision could be an ominous sign for the plaintiffs who challenged SB 14. The Fifth Circuit is considered the most conservative federal appellate courts in the nation, with 10 of its 15 current judges appointed by Republican presidents.

The court did not announce when it would hold oral arguments, but a ruling is likely to come before the November elections.

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