Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Vote Casting Restrictions

 The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld balloting restrictions in Arizona in a decision that could make it more difficult to challenge other voting limits put in place by Republican lawmakers following last year's elections.

The court, by a conservative-majority 6-3 vote, reversed a lower court ruling in determining that Arizona's rules on who can return early ballots for another individual and for the state's refusal to count ballots cast in the wrong precinct are not racially discriminatory.

The federal appeals court in San Francisco had held that the measures disproportionately affected Black, Hispanic and Native American voters in violation of a part of the landmark Voting Rights Act regarded as Section 2.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the conservative majority that the state's interest in the integrity of elections justified the measures.

The court rejected the concept that displaying that a state regulation disproportionately affects minority voters is sufficient to show a violation of law.

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the court was weakening the federal voting rights regulation for the second time in eight years.

"What is tragic here is that the Court has (yet again) rewritten — in order to weaken — a statute that stands as a monument to America's greatness, and protects in opposition to its basest impulses. What is tragic is that the Court has damaged a statute designed to bring about 'the end of discrimination in voting.' I respectfully dissent," Kagan wrote, joined by the other two liberal justices.

Native Americans who have to travel long distances to put their ballots in the mail were most probably to be affected via the ballot collection law. Votes cast by Black and Hispanic voters were most possibly to be tossed out due to the fact they were cast in a wrong precinct, the appeals court found.

But Alito stated the state measures were at most "modest burdens" that did not violate the law.

Election law professional Rick Hasen wrote on his blog that the decision "severely weakened" Section two of the Voting Rights Act. He noted that this choice alongside with others over the past 15 years have "taken away all the major available tools for going after voting restrictions."

"This is not a death blow for Section two claims, but it will make it much, much tougher for such challenges to succeed," Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, Law School, wrote.

The challenged Arizona provisions remained in effect in 2020 due to the fact the case was still making its way via the courts.

President Joe Biden narrowly won Arizona last year, and since 2018, the state has elected two Democratic senators. Arizona's most populous county, Maricopa, has been in the midst of a Republican-led audit difficult last year's vote.