A federal judge issued an order Tuesday blocking an Indiana legislation that banned the use of college-issued student identification cards for voting.
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Young granted the preliminary injunction sought by teams that filed a lawsuit challenging the student ID ban quickly after it was accredited by the Legislature final 12 months.
Young dominated that the challengers would seemingly succeed of their arguments that the legislation “imposes unconstitutional burdens on students and young voters in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”
Students had been allowed to use identification playing cards issued by public universities at polling locations to fulfill Indiana’s voter ID legislation below necessities that they included the voter’s identify, photograph and a sound expiration date.
Republican lawmakers, nevertheless, pushed via laws in 2025 eradicating the college-issued IDs from the listing of acceptable identification, arguing that they weren’t subject to the same “rigor” as driver’s licenses.
Young discovered that it was inconsistent for the state to ban the college-issued IDs for voting whereas nonetheless allowing the use of identification issued by the Veterans Administration, army and Native American tribes, “many of which are less uniform than student IDs.”
“By eliminating student IDs as an acceptable form of identification, Defendants selectively excluded a form of identification that otherwise complies with the neutral criteria established by Indiana’s voter ID law and that has been accepted as a form of voter identification for nearly two decades,” Young wrote.
Two teams — Count Us IN and Women4Change Indiana — and Indiana University student Josh Montagne filed the lawsuit in May 2025, alleging that the ban in Senate Bill 10 “deliberately abridges young voters’ right to vote.”
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita’s workplace, which has defended the ID ban in courtroom, stated Wednesday it supposed to attraction the judge’s ruling.
“Indiana’s voter ID law is critical to election security and integrity,” the workplace stated in an announcement. “Courts shouldn’t be watering the law down by doling out special exemptions to some students and faculty. We’ll keep fighting to uphold commonsense election rules.”
The workplace had maintained in courtroom filings that the ban “does not burden the right to vote.” It argued that any burden created by the change is “minimal” and that solely a small quantity of voters who beforehand relied on student IDs could be affected.
Young, who was nominated as a judge by President Bill Clinton in 1998, estimated in his ruling that about 40,000 Indiana college students could be impacted by the ID ban. An knowledgeable for the plaintiffs stated that quantity may attain 90,000.
The judge’s determination additionally cited a Monroe County election supervisor estimate that two-thirds of voters at polling areas on the Indiana University campus in Bloomington used student ID to vote in 2024.
“SB 10 marked the first time that Indiana singled out a previously acceptable form of ID and barred its use at the polls,” Young wrote. “Students are the only group that are told that their widely held, government-issued ID cannot be used to vote.”
The ruling stated supporters describe the legislation as an election-integrity measure however “there is no evidence that student IDs have been used to engage in voter fraud or any other voting-related misconduct.”
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