New Hampshire student ID voting wins a court fight for young voters

College students in New Hampshire just got a real break in the fight over New Hampshire student ID voting. The First Circuit Court of Appeals refused this week to reinstate a hard ban on considering student IDs at the polls, which means campus IDs still count as evidence of identity when young people vote in November's midterms. For students who do not have a driver's license, that ruling is the difference between voting and being turned away.

The case traces back to April, when Governor Kelly Ayotte signed a state law stripping student IDs from the list of acceptable voter identification. Days later, Secretary of State David Scanlan told local election officials that school-issued IDs "cannot be used" to register to vote, request an absentee ballot, or check in at a polling place. The Coalition for Open Democracy, a Concord-based voting rights group, sued in August, arguing the directive went further than the law itself and hit young voters hardest.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante, a George W. Bush appointee, split the difference on October 2. He left the underlying student ID ban in place for the midterms but ruled Scanlan's directive likely violated the First, Fourteenth and Twenty-Sixth Amendments. According to the court, the state offered no specific security reason why student IDs could not work under New Hampshire's longstanding safety-valve provision, which lets voters without a qualifying photo ID prove their identity by other reasonable means.

The state appealed and asked the First Circuit to freeze that order before the election, warning of confusion so close to voting day in the New Hampshire student ID voting fight. The appeals court said no. In a statement celebrating the decision, Free Speech for People, which represents the coalition, said the ruling lets election workers once again consider student IDs as proof of identity, giving young eligible voters a real chance to register and vote even if they cannot afford or easily get another form of ID.

Why New Hampshire keeps ending up in court over student voters

This is not the first time the state has fought young voters in court, and lost or stumbled. In 2017, former Governor Chris Sununu signed a law imposing strict residency requirements for voter registration; the state's Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional in 2021. Earlier this year, a federal court blocked a 2024 proof-of-citizenship voting law after the New Hampshire Youth Movement sued, and the First Circuit kept that ruling in place in September.

The pattern is why advocates treat each new rule as another chapter rather than an isolated fix. As Lisa Kovack of the New Hampshire Campaign for Voting Rights told Democracy Docket back in April, "Student IDs are one piece of identification used to verify voters who are already registered." The legal fight has also sown confusion: even with the win, student IDs alone do not automatically count as voter ID in New Hampshire, but officials may weigh them as supporting evidence.

What it means for students voting in November

If you are a student voting in New Hampshire this November, bring every form of ID you have. The ban on student IDs as standalone voter ID is still the law for these midterms. But under the safety-valve provision, an election worker can now consider your campus ID as evidence that you are who you say you are, which is exactly the kind of flexibility the judge said the legislature left untouched in the New Hampshire student ID voting case.

The coalition says it is not done. It plans to keep challenging the ban itself so students can be certain their school-issued IDs will be accepted outright. For now, the message from the courts is simple: states can debate what counts as voter ID, but they cannot use executive guidance to erase a protection that was left in the law. The New Hampshire student ID voting fight will keep shaping how young people show up at the polls.

Granite State college towns hold a lot of electoral weight because so many students vote where they study, and youth voter drives keep meeting them where they actually are. Dartmouth, UNH and Keene State students have repeatedly shown up in close races, which is why voting rules aimed at campus IDs keep drawing national attention every cycle.

Related reading: how Obama is campaigning in the final midterms push and why young turnout matters this cycle.

Sources: Democracy Docket's case timeline and Free Speech for People's statement on the First Circuit ruling, reporting by Bloomberg Law.