## Facts

- Indiana enacted a 2005 law requiring most voters casting ballots in person (including in-person absentee voting at a clerk’s office) to present government-issued photo identification.
- The requirement applied in primary and general elections, but not to mail-in absentee ballots; voters in certain state-licensed facilities were exempt.
- Voters without required ID could cast a provisional ballot; it would be counted only if the voter, within ten days, either presented ID or executed an affidavit of indigency or religious objection to being photographed.
- Indiana offered free photo identification to qualified voters who could establish identity and residence.
- Plaintiffs (individual voters and Democratic Party entities) brought a facial constitutional challenge seeking to enjoin enforcement.
- The district court granted summary judgment for the State due to an insufficient record to support facial invalidation; the Seventh Circuit affirmed.

## Issues

1. Whether Indiana’s photo ID requirement for in-person voting is unconstitutional on its face under the Fourteenth Amendment because it burdens the right to vote.
2. What analytical framework governs review of the law: the poll-tax line of cases or the Anderson–Burdick balancing approach for election regulations.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the judgment upholding the law against a facial challenge.
- A controlling majority agreed that the record did not show burdens severe enough, across the statute’s applications, to invalidate the law on its face.
- The plurality applied Anderson–Burdick balancing and found the law’s generally applicable burdens justified by legitimate state interests, including deterring fraud, improving election administration, and protecting public confidence.
- A separate concurrence would treat generally applicable, nondiscriminatory voting rules as valid absent a showing of severe burdens, rejecting individualized subgroup balancing as a basis for facial invalidation.
- Dissents concluded the law imposed substantial, disproportionate burdens on some voters and that the State did not adequately justify those burdens with concrete evidence tied to the problem targeted.

## Legal Principles

- Election regulations that affect voting are generally evaluated by weighing the character and magnitude of the burden on voting rights against the state’s asserted interests and the extent to which the regulation is necessary to serve those interests (Anderson–Burdick).
- Evenhanded, generally applicable voting requirements may be upheld where the burdens shown are limited or not demonstrated to be widespread, and the state advances legitimate interests such as election integrity, orderly administration, and public confidence.
- A facial challenge requires a record demonstrating that the law is unconstitutional in a broad range of applications, not merely that it may impose serious burdens on some voters in particular circumstances.

## Conclusion

The Court sustained Indiana’s photo ID law against a facial constitutional challenge, holding that—on the evidentiary record presented—the state’s asserted interests outweighed the law’s generally applicable burdens under the Anderson–Burdick framework, while leaving open the possibility of narrower, as-applied challenges based on concrete proof of disenfranchising effects.


Crawford v. Marion Cnty. Election Bd., 553 U.S. 181 (2008)