A judge in Wisconsin’s Dane County granted a temporary injunction barring enforcement of the state’s controversial voter ID law on Tuesday, ruling that enforcing the law on April 3 elections would likely cause irreparable harm.
The Wisconsin State Journal reports that Circuit Judge David Flanagan ruled that a suit by the NAACP’s Milwaukee branch and Voces de la Frontera against Gov. Scott Walker (R) had demonstrated that the lawsuit would probably succeed on its merits. He ordered Walker and the state to immediately cease their efforts to enforce or implement the law, pending a trial on April 16.
“If no injunction is issued, a clearly improper impairment of a most vital element of our society will occur,” Flanagan wrote in his decision, according to the newspaper. “The duty of the court is clear. The case has been made. Irreparable harm is likely to occur in the absence of an injunction.”
Separately, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has a federal suit pending against the state on behalf of Wisconsin voters. Some of them are students in Wisconsin but have out-of-state drivers licenses, meaning they would have to either surrender their licence in exchange for a free identification card or pay a fee to obtain a Wisconsin drivers license.
