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set to hear arguments over whether to overrule the Justice Department, which concluded in March that the Texas law requiring voters to have state ID to cast a ballot is illegal under federal law because it disproportionately disenfranchises Hispanic voters.

"(A) Hispanic registered voter is at least 45.6 percent, and potentially 120.0 percent, more likely than a non-Hispanic registered voter to lack (state-issued) identification," the head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, Tom Perez, told Texas officials in a letter in March. "Even assuming the data most favorable to the state, Hispanics disproportionately lack either a driver's license or a personal identification card issued by (the state), and that disparity is statistically significant."

According to Perez's letter, the Justice Department based its decision to block the law on "the state's own data" -- data handed over by Texas months earlier after the department requested more information.

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