On October 22, the Supreme Court stayed a federal district court’s preliminary injunction in Scanlan v. Coalition for Open Democracy, No. 26A512, a dispute over how New Hampshire may apply its new student-ID voting law in the November 3 general election. Justice Jackson noted her dissent. The case is not about firearms. It matters to readers of this site because the open New Hampshire Senate seat, contested by Republican John E. Sununu and Democrat Chris Pappas, helps determine who controls the chamber that confirms the next Supreme Court Justices.
What the District Court Actually Did
Precision matters here, because the case has been described loosely. New Hampshire’s HB 323, signed by Governor Kelly Ayotte on April 3, 2026, and effective June 2, removed public and private school student IDs from the list of identification that is automatically valid when a voter obtains a ballot. Only government-issued identification now qualifies automatically.
Judge Joseph N. Laplante of the District of New Hampshire did not enjoin HB 323. The statute stands untouched. After declining to grant relief before the September 8 primary, citing the Purcell principle, he partially granted a preliminary injunction on October 2 for the general election, with a separate order on October 5 stating its terms. That relief was directed at the Secretary of State’s guidance, which the court found reached further than the statute. It required new guidance telling election officials they may consider a student ID, alongside other evidence, in determining a voter’s identity.
That is a narrower order than some commentary suggests, though it still changed officials’ instructions roughly a month before voters went to the polls.
The Purcell Principle
The Court’s order rests on one short rationale:
“This Court has repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election. Republican National Committee v. Democratic National Committee, 589 U.S. 423, 424 (2020) (per curiam). Here, the District Court did not point to anything that would justify deviating from that principle.”
The principle traces to Purcell v. Gonzalez, 549 U.S. 1 (2006), which warned that court orders affecting elections can themselves produce voter confusion and an incentive to remain away from the polls, and that the risk grows as election day nears. New Hampshire’s application made the practical case. According to the application, local officials had been trained on the new identity-verification rules in the months after the Secretary’s April guidance, and the Secretary of State’s office had published student voter guides, updated its website and polling-place materials, and run radio advertising. The injunction arrived 32 days before the election and would have required much of that work to be redone.
The stay lasts pending the appeal in the First Circuit and any timely petition for certiorari. The Court gave no extended reasoning, and I will not claim it adopted every factual assertion in the State’s papers.
Why I Cover Senate Races
A Second Amendment advocate has structural reasons to follow a voter-ID dispute. A vacancy on the Court, whether through the retirement of Justice Thomas or Justice Alito or otherwise, is filled by a President’s nomination and the Senate’s confirmation. A comfortable Republican majority can confirm an originalist nominee without negotiating with its least reliable members. A 50-50 Senate gives leverage to the handful of senators who have broken with this President’s judicial nominees before.
The same pipeline produced the judges who decide our cases. The ruling by Judge James Wesley Hendrix in Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF and Jensen v. ATF, which struck down the National Firearms Act’s registration and taxation scheme for suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns, came from a judge appointed and confirmed through exactly this process. Without confirmed judges of that kind, these victories do not occur.
My View of the Underlying Dispute
What follows is my opinion, not a holding. New Hampshire’s Senate contests are consistently close. In 2016, Maggie Hassan defeated Kelly Ayotte by roughly 1,000 votes. In a state that tight, I believe out-of-state students, who may reasonably conclude that their vote counts for more in New Hampshire than in a lopsided home state, can matter at the margin. I also hold the view that a student paying out-of-state tuition has difficulty claiming residency in the same state for voting purposes.
I do not suggest the district court acted from any motive other than its reading of the law. New Hampshire registration turns on domicile, and a student ID has never been the document that establishes it. Justice Jackson, in dissent, would have left the order in place, writing that she “would not disturb a clearly justifiable federal court order issued to ensure that the public receives accurate information about a State’s electoral processes.” Reasonable jurists weighed the same facts and reached different conclusions about timing.
On timing, the majority’s answer is the one the Court has given consistently for two decades: federal courts do not rewrite election procedures at the last minute. HB 323 governs this election as written. Which senator New Hampshire sends to Washington will be decided by its voters under the rules its legislature enacted, and the consequences of that choice will reach the federal bench for a generation.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.