Sidebar: SCOTUS Blocks New Hampshire Election Orders, Citing Familiar Rule

With the November 3 midterms looming, the Supreme Court is once again reminding lower federal courts that last-minute changes to election procedures are generally a no-go.

In a brief order issued Thursday, the High Court granted New Hampshire's emergency request to block two district court injunctions involving the state's voter identification and registration requirements.

The majority invoked the Purcell principle, which generally discourages federal courts from changing election rules shortly before voters head to the polls. The justices also pointed to their recent intervention in Missouri's election litigation, People Not Politicians v. Onder.

But there's an interesting wrinkle here: According to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who dissented, the district judge wasn't actually changing New Hampshire's election laws. Rather, the judge had concluded that state election officials were providing misleading information about existing voter identification and registration requirements.

The injunctions were intended to require officials to accurately explain those requirements, including provisions addressing what identification voters could present.

Jackson argued that Purcell is intended to prevent voter confusion, not prevent courts from correcting it. In her view, the district court's orders accomplished the latter without doing the former.

The majority wasn't persuaded, finding that the district court hadn't identified a sufficient reason to depart from the longstanding rule against last-minute judicial intervention.

And to be clear, the Supreme Court did not decide whether New Hampshire officials had, in fact, misrepresented the law. It simply put the lower court's injunctions on hold while the appeal proceeds.

For now, the district court's orders remain blocked, and New Hampshire's election officials are no longer bound by those particular directives.

Another election case, another reminder that when it comes to the Supreme Court and last-minute changes to voting procedures, timing can be every bit as consequential as the underlying legal dispute.

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