"After close review, the department found that this law would be harmful to minority voters, and we rejected its implementation," (US Attorney General Eric Holder) told a wildly supportive crowd of hundreds gathered at the George R. Brown Convention Center. "Under the proposed law, concealed handgun licenses would be acceptable forms of photo ID, but student IDs would not. Many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them, and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them. We call those poll taxes."
Go here for the video. Meanwhile, back at the capital...
As the trial got under way in a packed courtroom, DOJ trial attorney Elizabeth Westfall went even further, arguing that the federal government will show racial motivation in Texas’s passage of the (Photo ID) law.
“The facts will convincingly demonstrate the discriminatory purpose and effect of Senate Bill 14,” Westfall told the three-judge panel in her brief opening argument in a trial expected to last through Friday.
[...]
In January, (federal district judge Rosemary) Collyer was one of three judges who sat for two weeks on a similar panel considering Texas’s request for clearance of its redistricting maps. That panel has yet to issue a final ruling.
