As I assume many readers of this blog noticed right away, E.J. Dionne wrongly described part of the 5th Circuit’s decision on Texas’ voter ID law in his recent piece, here, on voting rights.  While correctly noting that the Court found the law to violate Section 2 of the VRA, he also wrote that the Court had found the law to be a poll tax as well.  This turns the Court’s holding inside out:  while the District Court did find the law to be a poll tax, the 5th Circuit specifically reversed that conclusion and held that the law was not a poll tax.  This is of some importance, beyond the importance of reporting the law correctly, because one of the arguments that has frequently been made about voter ID laws, by both litigants and among academics, at least by Bruce Ackerman, is that these kind of laws are unconstitutional poll taxes.  Particularly in light of the fact that the 5th Circuit was nonetheless receptive to the plaintiffs’ claim under Section 2, I expect this decision will lead to the poll tax arguments playing a much more minor role, if they are pressed at all, in other cases going forward.

I had assumed someone else would have pointed out this mistake by now, but there is no correction in the Washington Post online version of the story, and I would not want other journalists or anyone else to repeat Dionne’s mistake, so I thought I would flag it here in hopes the story will be corrected.