The following opinion was released by the U.S. Supreme Court on April 28, 2008:

• Crawford v. Marion County Election Bd. (Opinion for the Court by Stevens, J., joined by Roberts, C.J., Kennedy, J.; concurring opinion by Scalia, J., joined by Thomas, Alito, JJ.; dissenting opinion by Souter, J., joined by Ginsburg, J.; dissenting opinion by Breyer, J.). Various voter groups and the Indiana Democratic Party challenged Indiana’s 2005 Voter ID law as an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment. The majority opinion held that Indiana had valid interests in enacting the Voter ID law: deterring and detecting voter fraud, election modernization, and safeguarding voter confidence; and that the evidence in the record does not support the petitioners’ arguments that the law’s restrictions heavily burden their exercise of their right to vote, and that the limited burdens supported by the record meet the state’s valid interests. Justice Scalia’s concurrence opined that, even if the record evidence did support the petitioners’ argument that they are heavily burdened by the law’s restrictions, those burdens are reasonable under the Fourteenth Amendment; instead of applying a strict scrutiny test, Justice Scalia would apply a “deferential ‘important regulatory interests’ standard.” Justice Souter’s dissent opines that “a State may not burden the right to vote merely by invoking abstract interests, be they legitimate, . . . or even compelling, but must make a particular, factual showing that threats to its interests outweigh the particular impediments it has imposed[,]” dissent, slip op. at 1; and found that the burdens of the Voter ID law would “impose nontrivial burdens on the voting right of tens of thousands of the State’s citizens, … and a significant percentage of those individuals are likely to be deterred from voting.” Justice Breyer’s dissent opines that, although the Constitution does not generally prohibit voter identification requirements, the record in this case shows Indiana’s statute to impose an unconstitutional burden on voters’ Fourteenth Amendment rights.