The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld Arizona’s elections laws, which the Democratic National Committee had argued were discriminatory.
The 6-3 ruling bolstered a state’s right to implement its own election requirements.
“Arizona law generally makes it very easy to vote. All voters may vote by mail or in person for nearly a month before election day,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the court.
He was joined by the court’s other five conservative justices.
The three Democrat-appointees disagreed with the ruling.
Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee, wrote a dissent, saying the majority of the justices ran afoul of the Voting Rights Act in upholding Arizona’s law.
“What is tragic is that the Court has damaged a statute designed to bring about ‘the end of discrimination in voting,’” she wrote.
Justices Stephen G. Breyer, a Clinton appointee, and Sonia Sotomayor, an Obama appointee, joined Justice Kagan’s dissent.
The Democratic Party’s lawsuit originally launched in 2016 aimed to ease Arizona’s restrictions on ballot harvesting and other elections conduct like assigned precinct voting.
The U.S. District Court ruled for Arizona. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled for the Democrats and said the state had enacted its election laws with discriminatory intent.
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