The U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision invalidating Texas abortion restrictions could make it harder for states to justify voting restrictions, Stanford Law School’s Pamela Karlan said Aug. 5 while speaking at the American Bar Association’s annual meeting.

The court’s test for examining abortion rights is doctrinally similar to the test used for voting rights, Karlan told Bloomberg BNA in an interview.

Therefore, the court’s clarification of abortion’s “undue burden” standard could have ramifications for cases challenging recent voting restrictions, like voter identification laws, she said.

It’s a subtle shift, but it means courts will probably be more skeptical of voter ID laws, Karlan said.

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Until the 1980s, the Supreme Court analyzed voting and abortion restrictions under “standard-style strict scrutiny,” Karlan said.

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But the court began subjecting some voting and abortion regulations to a lower standard of review during William Rehnquist’s tenure as Chief Justice, between 1986 and 2005, Karlan said.

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The tests applicable to voting and abortion restrictions are very similar, Karlan said.

So the court’s recent clarification of the “undue burden” analysis in a challenge to Texas abortion restrictions provides some guidance for voting rights disputes too, she said.

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Karlan said the shift in the test was small but significant.

It means that states can’t show only that a rational reason exists to pass the laws, but that the law actually produces the benefits that are being claimed, Karlan said.

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That case demonstrates how courts are looking at voting restrictions with more skepticism following Whole Woman’s Health, Karlan said.

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Moreover, the court’s clarification in Whole Woman’s Health, that the focus of the burden analysis is on the women actually affected by the laws, could have important implications for voting rights cases, Karlan said.

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By focusing the burden analysis on only those that are actually burdened—rather than all voters—the court made it easier for plaintiffs to show that voter ID laws are unnecessarily burdensome, Karlan said.

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Karlan added that she is working on a paper examining the link between the court’s decision in Whole Woman’s Health and voting rights, which she should complete before the end of the year.

The panel on which Karlan spoke was “The Roberts Court 2015–2016: A Tragic Death, Its Impacts, and the Future of the Roberts Court.”

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