On Thursday, the Supreme Court granted Arizona the temporary authority to implement stricter voting requirements, including a mandate for proof of citizenship from those registering to vote before the upcoming election.
The ruling, delivered through a brief, unsigned order, gave a partial win to Republicans who championed a 2022 Arizona law that introduces new voting restrictions. However, the court chose not to permit the enforcement of another provision of the law, which could have barred tens of thousands of already-registered voters from participating in the presidential election or voting by mail unless they could provide proof of citizenship.
The order did not provide detailed legal reasoning, a common practice in such emergency rulings. Indications suggest that the justices were divided on the matter, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh possibly casting votes on opposing sides.
The order did not specify the justices’ positions, but it revealed that four justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—had opposed allowing the state to enforce both provisions. Meanwhile, three justices—Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., and Neil M. Gorsuch—were in favor of enforcing both measures.
The divided ruling means that Arizonans who register to vote for the upcoming election will be required to submit copies of specific documents, such as a birth certificate or passport, to verify their citizenship.
Controversies over voting regulations in Arizona have persisted since the 2020 presidential election, when Donald J. Trump narrowly lost the state. In the aftermath, Republican legislators conducted a partisan review of the election results, and Trump has frequently criticized the expanded vote-by-mail system that emerged during the coronavirus pandemic.
Following lower federal courts’ decisions to block the new voting restrictions, the Republican National Committee and state legislators sought the Supreme Court’s intervention.
The issue at hand is whether the mandate to provide proof of citizenship infringes upon the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and a 2018 settlement between the state and the League of United Latin American Citizens, a long-standing Latino civil rights organization.
According to the settlement, individuals who are unable to present proof of citizenship on their state registration forms would still be eligible to vote if they could demonstrate their citizenship using documents from Arizona’s Department of Transportation.