supreme court

Update: Cliff Schecter notes that Sen. Obama has condemned the decision, but Sen. Clinton, who stands to benefit most from depressed youth turnout, is mum. Curious. And disappointing.
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As you may have heard, the Supreme Court issued a decision today upholding Indiana's photo ID law. By a vote of 6 - 3 the court determined that Indiana's photo ID law, which requires all voters have a valid government issued photo ID listing their current address, was necessary to prevent voter fraud. This, despite the fact that the court admitted there was no evidence of such fraud ever taking place in Indiana.

This ruling could have potentially huge repercussions in the upcoming Indiana Primary. According to Rock the Vote polling data, almost 1 in 5 18 - 29 year olds do not own valid photo ID listing their most recent address. Young voters are highly transient. We move from state to state, town to town, dorm to dorm for years. I'm 29 years old and I've lived in 9 different residences and 3 different states in the last 12 years. I'm about as politically active as you can be, but under such stringent photo-ID laws, I probably would not have been able to vote at least 9 of those years.

Worse, the ruling not only applied to Indiana but left the door wide open for similar challenges in other states - creating the potential for a landslide of voter suppression in the November election.

This could be a huge deal if Republicans play hardball (and when don't they play hardball). Let me repeat, Rock the Vote estimates that this could disenfranchise 1 in 5 young voters. That's huge - millions of people huge - particularly in a year where we are seeing incredible gains in youth participation.

Rock the Vote sent out an email noting the backwards thinking in the Supreme Court's decision:

) The Court admits in its ruling that the reasoning behind imposing this strict law – the desire to prevent voter fraud – was inapplicable in Indiana. In its ruling, the Court stated "the record contains no evidence that the fraud…in-person voter impersonation at polling places – has actually occurred in Indiana…" (page 2, emphasis added)

2) The Court also downgrades the constitutional right to vote. Justice Scalia, joined by Justices Thomas and Alito, stated "petitioners' premise that the voter-identification law might have imposed a special burden on some voters is irrelevant." (page 3, emphasis added)

3) Finally, the Court states that the burden of obtaining this identification is not "a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting" (page 3), reiterating the sentiment behind the Seventh Circuit's shocking statement that voters who do not obtain the required identification are choosing to "disenfranchise themselves" rather than go to "the expense of obtaining a photo ID." (Crawford v. Marion County Election Bd., 472 F.3d 949, 952 (7th Cir. 2007), cert. granted, 168 L. Ed 2d 809 (2007))

The ACLU, Rock the Vote, YDA, Common Cause, and Speaker Pelosi's office have all issued statements (though some curiously leave young people out of the affected constituencies.

Shorter version: this is bad.

The Supreme Court handed down a decision this week against x-high schooler Joseph Frederick who created the banner “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” during a parade in support of the Winter Olympics.

“It remains to be seen what far-reaching effects the decision will have on students' free-speech rights. There's still a great deal of confusion regarding the issue since there are really no hard-and-fast rules concerning what forms of speech are acceptable when you're a student — and which ones could land you in front of a judge.”

When students ask Witold "Vic" Walczak — the legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania — for a general rule of thumb when it comes to students' First Amendment rights, "What I usually tell them is, if it involves political or religious speech, you've got fairly extensive rights. Beyond that, not so much. Truth be told, students did not have significant expressive rights before now, except when it dealt with religious and political [matters]." MTV

Me: Damn… were did those free speech rights go?
Answer: Did you check between the cushions of the supreme court?

more below the jump