A federal judge this week blocked Indiana from enforcing a law that bars college-issued student identification cards from being used for voting, ruling that the measure likely violates the constitutional rights of students and young voters.
U.S. District Judge Richard Young granted a preliminary injunction on Tuesday against Senate Bill 10, a 2025 law that removed student IDs from Indianas list of acceptable voter identification even though such cards had been accepted for nearly two decades if they included a voters name, photograph, expiration date and were issued by the state or federal government.
“Plaintiffs have shown that they are likely to succeed on their claim that SB 10 imposes unconstitutional burdens on students and young voters in violation of the ,” Young, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, wrote in a 34-page order. “They have also established irreparable harm and satisfied the remaining requirements for a preliminary injunction.”
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokitas office said Wednesday it intends to appeal, arguing that the states voter ID law should not be weakened by court-ordered exceptions.
“Indianas voter ID law is critical to election security and integrity,” the office told the Indiana Capital Chronicle in a statement. “Courts shouldnt be watering the law down by doling out special exemptions to some students and faculty. Well keep fighting to uphold commonsense election rules.”
Notably, out of state college students might be registered in another state, perhaps a nexus for the state’s requiring a state or federal-issued ID.
Still, Young concluded that “is probably unconstitutional.”
“While it’s true that an injunction would override a democratically adopted law, Indiana has no valid interest in enforcing ‘a statute that is probably unconstitutional,'” Young wrote.
The ruling is a setback for Republican state lawmakers who approved SB 10 last year after arguing that student IDs were not issued with the same rigor as Indiana drivers licenses and state identification cards. Young found the states position undercut by the fact that Indiana still allows other non-driver forms of identification â including military, Veterans Administration and tribal IDs â many of which, he wrote, are “less uniform than student IDs.”
“By eliminating student IDs as an acceptable form of identification, Defendants selectively excluded a form of identification that otherwise complies with the neutral criteria established by Indianas voter ID law and that has been accepted as a form of voter identification for nearly two decades,” Young wrote.
The judge said he did not need to decide, at this stage, a separate claim that the law intentionally discriminates on the basis of age in violation of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment.
The lawsuit was filed in May 2025 by Count US IN, Women4Change Indiana and student Josh Montagne, who had used his IU-issued student ID to vote three times but said he lacked another form of qualifying identification after the law took effect.
Youngs order described student IDs as a long-standing, widely used tool for voting on Indiana campuses. The opinion cited evidence that nearly 200,000 students attend Indiana public universities whose IDs previously qualified under the voter ID law, and noted a Monroe County election supervisors estimate that about two-thirds of voters at an on-campus Indiana University polling place used student IDs in the 2024 general election.
The judge estimated that the actual number of students affected by the ban was likely about 40,000, though he noted the plaintiffs expert had produced higher estimates. H
