WASHINGTON (AP) – Eight years after historic voting rights law was eroded, the Supreme Court is considering setting new limits on efforts to combat racial discrimination in voting.
The judges are hearing a case over Arizona restrictions on ballot collection and another policy that penalizes voters who cast ballots in the wrong district.
The Supreme Court’s consideration comes as Republican officials in the state and across the country After last year’s elections, proposed more than 150 measures to limit voting rights that civil rights groups say would have a disproportionate impact on black and Spanish voters.
A broad Supreme Court ruling would make it more difficult to fight those efforts in court. Before Tuesday, arguments will be presented by telephone due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“It would take away one of the great tools, in fact the most important tool we have now, to protect voters from racial discrimination,” said Myrna Perez, director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s voting rights and electoral program.
Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican in Arizona, said the Supreme Court case is about the integrity of the vote, not discrimination. “This is about protecting the franchise, not taking someone away,” said Brnovich, who will be advocating the case Tuesday.
President Joe Biden narrowly won Arizona last year, and since 2018, the state has elected two Democratic senators.
The judges will review an appeals court ruling against a 2016 Arizona law restricting who can return early ballots for another person and against a separate state policy to discard ballots if a voter goes to the wrong district.
The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the vote collection law and state policy discriminate against minority voters in violation of the federal voting rights law and that the law also violates the constitution.
First enacted in 1965, the Voting Rights Act was extraordinarily effective against discrimination at the polls because it forced state and local governments, with a history of discrimination, including Arizona, to get prior approval from the Department of Justice or a federal court before any changes in elections.
In 2013, the Supreme Court 5-4 ruled that the portion of the law known as Section 5 could no longer be enforced because the population formula to determine which states it covered had not been updated to account for racial advancement.
Congress “must identify the jurisdictions to be elected on a basis that makes sense in the light of the current circumstances,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote to a Conservative majority. “It cannot simply rely on the past.”
Democrats in Congress will try again to revive the pre-approval provision of the Voting Rights Act. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act failed in the last Congress, when Republicans controlled the Senate and President Donald Trump was in the White House.
But another part of the law, Section 2, applies nationally and still prohibits discrimination in race-based voting. Civil rights groups and voters accused of racial bias should go to court to prove their case, either by showing deliberate discrimination in passing a law or by the fact that the results of the law fall most heavily on minorities.
The new case at the Supreme Court mainly concerns how plaintiffs can demonstrate discrimination based on the outcomes of the law.
The arguments take place against the backdrop of the 2020 elections, in which the pandemic saw a huge increase in the number of early votes and ballot entries. Trump and his Republican supporters contested the election results by bringing up allegations of fraud that were broadly rejected by state and federal courts.
But many Republicans continue to question the outcome of the election, despite the lack of evidence. GOP elected officials have responded by proposing to limit early voting and ballot submissions, as well as stricter voter identification laws.
Arizona’s disputed provisions remained in effect in 2020 as the case was still pending through the courts.
But Brnovich said last year’s vote is another reason why the judges have to side with the state. “I think part of the lesson from 2020 was that when people don’t believe that elections have integrity or that their vote is protected, it will undermine public confidence in the system,” Brnovich said.
Civil rights organizations said the court should not use this case to eradicate racial discrimination, which “continues to pose a unique threat to our democracy,” as the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund put it briefly.
Nearly 75 companies, including PayPal, Levi Strauss and Impossible Foods, joined in a short letter urging the court to “fully enforce the voting rights law.”
Justice will not be part of Tuesday’s arguments, a rarity in a suffrage case.
The Trump administration backed Arizona. The Biden administration said in a somewhat cryptic letter to the court this month that it believes “neither of Arizona’s measures violates the Section 2 result test,” but did not like the way its predecessor analyzed the issues.
The new government’s suggestion could provide the court with a scary way to enforce Arizona’s provisions without making significant changes to voting discrimination laws.
A decision is expected in early summer.