PA Supreme Court Rules Lower Court Must Revist Voter ID Law

Via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

HARRISBURG -- The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ordered a lower court to revisit its decision that allowed the new voter ID law to remain in effect for the November elections.  

If Commonwealth Court finds the state's implementation of the law will disenfranchise voters in November, the high court has ordered it to issue an injunction.

Via Keystone Politics:

We should be optimistic given this ruling. The PA Supreme Court did not “punt” the issue.  

Here is the crucial, predictive paragraph from pages 6 and 7 of the ruling:

Thus, we will return the matter to the Commonwealth Court to make a present assessment of the actual availability of the alternate identification cards on a developed record in light of the experience since the time the cards became available. In this regard, the court is to consider whether the procedures being used for deployment of the cards comport with the requirement of liberal access which the General Assembly attached to the issuance of PennDOT identification cards. If they do not, or if the Commonwealth Court is not still convinced in its predictive judgment that there will be no voter disenfranchisement arising out of the Commonwealth’s implementation of a voter identification requirement for purposes of the upcoming election, that court is obliged to enter a preliminary injunction.