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July 01, 2021 - United States Supreme Court upheld voting restrictions in Arizona introduced by Republican-controlled state parliament. In favor of 6 out of 3 judges, with the three liberals in dissent. The decision could make it more difficult to challenge other voting measures introduced by Republican lawmakers after last year's elections.
The Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling ruling that Arizona limits are not racially discriminatory. The federal appeals court in San Francisco, on the other hand, found that the measures disproportionately affected black, Hispanic and Native American voters in violation of the historic Voting Rights Act.
The decision signals that challenging the ongoing crackdown in various Republican states, as the Biden administration and the Democratic party intend to do, will receive a hostile reception from the majority of the court. According to the DEM, the restrictions penalize minorities by violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the law that prohibits racial discrimination in voting.
Judge Samuel Alito wrote, making the conservative majority, that the state's interest in the integrity of the elections justifies the measures. In dissent, Judge Elena Kagan instead noted that the court was weakening the historic Voting Rights Act for the second time in eight years.
"What is tragic here is that the Court has (once again) rewritten - to weaken it - a statute that stands as a monument to America's greatness and protects it from its lowest impulses. What is tragic is that the Court damaged a statute intended to bring about 'an end to discrimination in voting'. I respectfully disagree, "he noted, along with the other two minority judges. In particular, the restrictions, considered non-discriminatory by the Supreme Court, concern who can return the ballot papers in place of another person and the ability to refuse recount of votes associated with a wrong district.