Justice Stevens' Opinion for the Court (joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy) stressed the fact that this legal challenge was to the face of the statute and thus the burden was higher for ruling the law unconstitutional:
Petitioners bear a heavy burden of persuasion in seeking to invalidate SEA 483 in all its applications. This Court’s reasoning in Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party, 552 U. S. ___, applies with added force here. Petitioners argue that Indiana’s
interests do not justify the burden imposed on voters who cannot afford or obtain a birth certificate and who must make a second trip to the circuit court clerk’s office, but it is not possible to quantify, based on the evidence in the record, either that burden’s magnitude or the portion of the burden that is fully justified. A facial challenge must fail where the statute has a “ ‘plainly legitimate sweep.’ ” Id., at ___. When considering SEA 483’s broad application to all Indiana voters, it “imposes only a limited burden on voters’ rights.” Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U. S. 428, 439. The “precise interests” advanced by Indiana are therefore sufficient to defeat petitioners’ facial challenge.
From Justice Souter's (joined by Justice Ginsburg) dissent:
JUSTICE SOUTER, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG joins, dissenting. Indiana’s “Voter ID Law”1 threatens to impose nontrivial burdens on the voting right of tens of thousands of the State’s citizens, see ante, at 14–15 (lead opinion), and a significant percentage of those individuals are likely to be deterred from voting, see ante, at 15–16. The statute is unconstitutional under the balancing standard of Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U. S. 428 (1992): a State may not burden the right to vote merely by invoking abstract interests, be they legitimate, see ante, at 7–13, or even compelling, but must make a particular, factual showing that threats to
its interests outweigh the particular impediments it has imposed. The State has made no such justification here, and as to some aspects of its law, it has hardly even tried. I therefore respectfully dissent from the Court’s judgment sustaining the statute.2
From Justice Breyer's dissent:
In determining whether this statute violates the Federal Constitution, I would balance the voting-related interests that the statute affects, asking “whether the statute burdens any one such interest in a manner out of proportion to the statute’s salutary effects upon the others (perhaps, but not necessarily, because of the existence of a clearly superior, less restrictive alternative).” Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government
PAC, 528 U. S. 377, 402 (2000) (BREYER, J., concurring); ante, at 6–7 (lead opinion) (similar standard); ante, at 2–3 (SOUTER, J., dissenting) (similar standard). Applying this standard, I believe the statute is unconstitutional because it imposes a disproportionate burden upon those eligible voters who lack a driver’s license or other statutorily valid form of photo ID.
In concurrence, Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito argued that burdens on voters are irrelevant:
The lead opinion assumes petitioners’ premise that the voter-identification law “may have imposed a special burden on” some voters, ante, at 16, but holds that petitioners have not assembled evidence to show that the special burden is severe enough to warrant strict scrutiny, ante, at 18–19. That is true enough, but for the sake of
clarity and finality (as well as adherence to precedent), I prefer to decide these cases on the grounds that petitioners’ premise is irrelevant and that the burden at issue is minimal and justified.
