The Reverend Debra Haffner, Pamela Wilson and Dawn Wagner Houston carry signs as activists rally in support of the “For the People Act” voting rights legislation in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, June 23, 2021.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled 6-3 to uphold Arizona voting rules supported by Republicans that Democrats alleged unlawfully discriminated against the state’s Native American, Hispanic and Black voters.
The case concerned two Arizona voting rules that a federal appeals court found to be in violation of the Voting Rights Act, citing their disproportionate impact on minorities.
One of the measures, known as the “out-of-precinct policy,” disqualifies ballots cast in the wrong precinct on Election Day. The other measure, known as the “ballot-collection law,” forbids most people except for family members to collect and deliver ballots to the polls. Republicans often refer to third-party ballot collection as ballot harvesting.
The Democratic National Committee challenged the two measures under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires elections to be equally open to people of all races. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the DNC.
The full appeals court said in a ruling last year that the out-of-precinct policy had a discriminatory impact on Native American, Hispanic, and Black voters in Arizona. With regard to the ballot-collection law, the court said that the circumstances “cumulatively and unmistakably revealed” that racial bias was responsible for its enactment.
The cases are formally known as Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, No. 19–1257 and Arizona Republican Party v. DNC, No. 19–1258.
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