Download the complete ruling here.

In another resounding defeat for efforts to require voters to present photo identification at the polls, Cole County Circuit Judge Richard Callahan ruled on Thursday that Missouri's new voter identification law (SB 1014) is an unconstitutional infringement on the right to vote. Callahan ruled that the law was an unconstitutional burden on voters because the paperwork required to get those IDs is not free.

While agreeing that a photo ID requirement is not a burden for most of society, he wrote in his ruling “for the elderly, the poor, the under-educated, or otherwise disadvantaged, the burden can be great if not insurmountable, and it is those very people outside the mainstream of society who are the least equipped to bear the costs or navigate the many bureaucracies necessary to obtain the required documentation."