The case tested whether Arizona restrictions violate the 1965 Civil Rights Act.
A divided US Supreme Court on Thursday upheld two Republican-backed Arizona voting restrictions, rejecting claims that they discriminate against minority voters and imposing new limits on the landmark Voting Rights Act.
The 6-to-3 decision, breaking along ideological lines, overturned a lower court ruling to uphold Arizona's policy of invalidating ballots cast in the wrong precinct and a law criminalizing the collection of mail ballots by third-party community groups or campaigns.
Democrats had argued that data show both restrictions disproportionately hurt Latino and Native American voters in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits policies that "results in the denial or abridgement of the right to vote of any citizen on account of race or color."
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the court's six conservatives, said Section 2 requires equal openness to voting not equal outcomes.
"It appears that the core of [Section 2] is the requirement that voting be 'equally open.' The statute's reference to equal 'opportunity' may stretch that concept to some degree to include consideration of a person's ability to use the means that are equally open. But equal openness remains the touchstone," Alito wrote.
"Mere inconvenience cannot be enough to demonstrate a violation of [Section 2]," he said.
Civil rights advocates, Democrats and the court's three liberal justices warned that the decision's more stringent standard for proving racial disparity in voting will weaken the protections intended by Congress.
"This Court has no right to remake Section 2. Maybe some think that vote suppression is a relic of history—and so the need for a potent Section 2 has come and gone. But Congress gets to make that call," Justice Elean Kagan wrote in dissent. "Because it has not done so, this Court's duty is to apply the law as it is written."
"The law that confronted one of this country's most enduring wrongs; pledged to give every American, of every race, an equal chance to participate in our democracy; and now stands as the crucial tool to achieve that goal. That law, of all laws, deserves the sweep and power Congress gave it. That law, of all laws, should not be diminished by this Court," she said.
It is the biggest voting rights case at the high court in nearly a decade since the justices in 2013 gutted a key part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting laws.
The ruling will have a sweeping impact on the fate of state election laws as dozens of GOP-led states push for voting restrictions in the wake of former President Donald Trump's claims of 2020 election fraud.
The restrictions at issue toss out ballots cast out of precinct and ban campaign or community groups from collecting ballots, which GOP critics call "ballot harvesting."
Kate Shaw, a Cardozo law professor and ABC News legal analyst, said the ruling was a big win for Republicans and will have real-world implications.
"This is a ruling that definitely will make it easier for states to impose restrictions, harder for plaintiffs and voting rights groups to challenge these kinds of restrictions, and could really impact the outcome in close elections going forward," she said.
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Supreme Court upholds Arizona restrictions in major voting rights, racial discrimination case - ABC News
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