Crawford v. Marion County Election Board
The Court upheld Indiana's law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, ruling that the challengers had not proven the requirement placed an unconstitutional burden on voters generally.
The decision cleared the way for states to adopt photo-ID requirements for in-person voting, a practice that has since spread to many other states, while leaving open the possibility that specific voters facing real hardship could bring narrower challenges later.
“However slight that burden may appear, as Harper demonstrates, it must be justified by relevant and legitimate state interests “sufficiently weighty to justify the limitation.””
The Court's standard for weighing any burden a voting law places on the right to vote.
How it got here: A federal trial court granted summary judgment upholding the law, a divided Seventh Circuit panel affirmed, and the Supreme Court granted review.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Indiana enacted a law in 2005 requiring people voting in person to show government-issued photo identification, with exceptions for absentee voters, nursing-home residents, and people who could later prove indigency or a religious objection to being photographed. The state Democratic Party and several nonprofit groups representing elderly, disabled, poor, and minority voters sued, arguing the law would keep eligible voters from the polls without adequately fighting fraud.
The question before the Court
Could Indiana require voters to show government-issued photo identification before casting a ballot in person?
The Court's answer
Yes — the Court ruled that Indiana could require in-person voters to show government-issued photo identification, because the challengers' broad, facial attack on the whole law failed. The state's interests in deterring fraud, modernizing elections, and maintaining accurate voter rolls were legitimate, and for the vast majority of voters, getting a free photo ID is not a substantial burden.
The Court acknowledged the record suggested a smaller group of voters — elderly people born out of state, the poor, or those with religious objections — might face a heavier burden, but found no reliable evidence of how many people were actually affected or how severe that burden really was. Because the lawsuit sought to strike down the statute in every application rather than challenge it as applied to specific voters, that thin evidentiary record was not enough to justify invalidating the law altogether.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Voters in Indiana and other states with similar laws must show an approved photo ID to vote in person, or use a provisional ballot and later prove eligibility. Election officials gained a Supreme-Court-approved model for identification requirements, while voters who lack ready access to ID — often poorer, older, or disabled people — bear the practical burden of obtaining one.
What changes now
This is a final merits decision, so the Voter ID Law remains in effect and Indiana's photo-identification requirement continues to apply to in-person voting. The ruling does not foreclose future as-applied challenges brought by specific voters who can show the law actually prevented them from voting. Other states have since relied on this decision when defending their own voter-ID laws.
What this does not decide
The Court decided only that the record in this broad, facial challenge could not support striking down the law entirely; it left open whether individual voters who can show a specific, serious burden might succeed in a narrower, as-applied lawsuit against the same law.
Concurrences and dissents
How the Justices voted
Majority (1). Justice Stevens (author).
Separate writings (1). Justice Scalia (author of a concurrence).
Dissent (2). Justice Souter (author).
Concurrence — Justice Scalia
Justice Scalia agreed the law should be upheld but would have reasoned more categorically: under Burdick, nondiscriminatory, generally applicable voting laws that impose only ordinary burdens should be evaluated for their effect on voters as a whole, not tailored to individual voters' circumstances. He argued the burden here is minimal and justified for everyone, so courts need not consider whether the law is especially hard on particular voters. Read the full concurrence →
Dissent — Justice Souter
“If the Court’s decision in Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, 383 U. S. 663 (1966), stands for anything, it is that being poor has nothing to do with being qualified to vote.”Souter's central objection that the law burdens poor voters without justification.
Justice Souter argued the law imposes serious, non-trivial burdens — travel costs, fees for documents, and repeated trips to the county seat — that will fall heavily on poor, elderly, and disabled voters, tens of thousands of whom lack qualifying ID. He found Indiana's anti-fraud and confidence-building justifications weak given the total absence of documented in-person voter impersonation, and would have vacated and remanded. Read the full dissent →
Dissent — Justice Breyer
Justice Breyer agreed a photo-ID requirement is not automatically unconstitutional but concluded Indiana's specific version is disproportionate because it lacks the safeguards recommended by a bipartisan election commission, such as free and phased-in IDs, and is stricter than comparable laws in Florida and Georgia. He would have found this particular statute unconstitutional as written. Read the full dissent →
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied the flexible balancing approach from Anderson v. Celebrezze and Burdick v. Takushi, under which a court weighs the burden a voting rule places on voters against the state's precise interests in imposing it, rather than applying one fixed level of scrutiny to every voting law.
- The Court found Indiana's asserted interests — deterring in-person voter impersonation, modernizing elections consistent with federal election-reform statutes, addressing inflated voter rolls, and safeguarding public confidence in elections — were all legitimate and unquestioned by the challengers.
- Because the challengers brought a facial challenge seeking to strike down the law in all its applications, the Court held they carried a heavy burden to show the law lacks any legitimate use, rather than simply pointing to some voters who might be burdened.
- The Court acknowledged the law could impose a heavier burden on a limited group of voters, such as elderly people born out of state or people who cannot easily obtain a birth certificate, but found the trial record contained no reliable count of how many such voters exist or how severe their burden actually was.
- Weighing the record evidence, the Court concluded that for the vast majority of voters the burden of obtaining free photo identification is not substantial, and that the record could not establish that the law's burden on the narrower group of affected voters was unjustified enough to invalidate the statute across the board.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections (383 U. S. 663)
The Court relies on Harper's rule that voting restrictions unrelated to voter qualifications are invalid.
Reaffirms Anderson v. Celebrezze (460 U. S. 780)
The Court reaffirms Anderson's balancing approach for evaluating burdens on the right to vote.
Reaffirms Burdick v. Takushi (504 U. S. 428)
The Court applies Burdick's framework weighing voter burdens against the state's precise interests.