In precursor to the Georgia election law challenges, the USSC upholds Arizona restrictions!

SUPREME COURT DELIVERS MAJOR BLOW TO DEMS’ CAMPAIGN AGAINST STATE ELECTION LAW

On the last day before its summer recess, the Supreme Court upheld two Arizona voting provisions that Democrats and civil rights groups challenged as disproportionately burdening minority voters. The vote was 6-3, with only the three hardcore liberals dissenting.

Amy Howe at Scotusblog observes that the decision “will make it more difficult to contest election regulations under the Voting Rights Act.” That’s probably an understatement. The motion to dismiss Kristen Clarke’s suit challenging Georgia’s election law will all but write itself now.

The majority opinion found that the “core” of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, under which the challenge to the Arizona law was made, is the “requirement that voting be ‘equally open.” That determination should be made taking all of the circumstances into account.

In a key passage, the majority stated that the size of the burden imposed by a voting rule is “highly relevant.” “After all,” it observed, “every voting rule imposes a burden of some sort.” Thus, “mere inconvenience cannot be enough to demonstrate a violation of” Section 2.

What if a voting rule affects some racial or ethnic groups more than others? In that event, the majority said, courts should consider the size of the disparate impact. The existence of some disparate impact does not, standing alone, mean that there is not equal opportunity to vote.

Finally, the majority stressed that in cases like this one, courts should look at the reason why states imposed a particular voting rule. And the majority was quite clear that the goal of preventing voter fraud is a “strong and entirely legitimate state interest.”

This is a crushing, but not unexpected, ruling to Merrick Garland's attempt to sue Georgia over their voting law. As previously explained here, the Merrick Garland lawsuit is alleging that the Georgia legislation wrote the law with racist intent. Why was this done? Largely because of the expectation that the Supreme Court would rule as they just did. That a rule or law affecting one racial or ethnic group more than others does not (on it's own) mean that there is not an equal opportunity to vote.

But the fact that the USSC made specific mention that the legislative goal of preventing voter fraud is "strong and entirely legitimate state interest" will make proving that the Georgia law is racist by intent virtually impossible. Obviously Georgia will argue that everything they did was in the interest of preventing voter fraud. The court just openly acknowledged not just that this was a "legitimate" state interest, but a "strong and legitimate" state interest. Almost as if they anticipated the upcoming legal debate.

If one were to have argued last week that Garland had two chances and those were slim and none. I believe that slim left the building with this devastating ruling.