Divided Supreme Court rejects GOP bid to prevent some Arizonans from voting in presidential election

The Supreme Court on Thursday turned down a request from Republicans to deny tens of thousands of registered voters the right to cast ballots in this year’s presidential contest in Arizona, which is expected to be one of the most hotly contested states.

The Republican National Committee and GOP leaders of the Arizona Legislature asked the high court to allow the state to enforce a 2022 state law that requires people to submit “documentary proof of citizenship” in order to vote for president. A federal judge blocked that law from taking effect, and in a terse order on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket, the justices kept the proof-of-citizenship requirement on ice while legal challenges continue.

The high court also refused to reinstate a separate provision of the 2022 law that bars voters from receiving mail-in ballots for any office if they have not submitted proof of citizenship.

The court offered no rationale as it kept those provisions blocked, but three of the court’s most conservative members — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — indicated they would have allowed Arizona to put its 2022 law into effect.

Arizona first tried to require all voters to prove their citizenship in a 2004 state law. But courts declared that law in conflict with a federal voter-registration law passed in 1993 that requires voters to affirm their citizenship under penalty of perjury but not to submit documentation. The federal law overrides the state citizenship requirement for federal races, so about 41,000 Arizona voters who did not submit a passport or birth certificate are now on a “federal-only” list permitted to vote in presidential and congressional contests even as the state refuses to allow them to vote in state and local races.

The 2022 state law sought to further restrict these “federal-only” voters by adding the prohibitions on presidential and mail-in voting.

The Biden administration and Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, opposed the Republicans’ efforts to put those prohibitions into effect before this year’s election. Allowing the restrictions, they argued, would be unfair to voters and be highly disruptive for election officials with ballot deadlines looming and early voting set to open in about six weeks.

The justices did allow a different provision of the 2022 Arizona law to take effect: a requirement that new voters submit proof of citizenship if they register using the state’s own registration form. But that requirement is unlikely to have broad impact because new voters can still use a federal form to register to vote without submitting citizenship documents.

The vote to allow the provision on the state form to take effect was 5-4, with conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the court’s three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — in dissent from that decision.

As with the other portion of the court’s order, no justices explained their votes. It is customary for the court to resolve requests for so-called emergency relief without issuing an opinion or providing any reasoning.

Fontes expressed concern Thursday about alterations to voting procedures in the weeks preceding the election. Imposing the proof-of-citizenship requirement for voters who submit state registration forms may create confusion for voters, he said.

"We respect the Court's decision and will implement these changes while continuing to protect voter access and make [voting a] simple process," Fontes said in a statement .

Fontes said that between now and Arizona’s Oct. 7 registration deadline, Arizonans who submit “new state forms” without proof of citizenship will be denied registration altogether, although the federal forms will continue to be processed. The number of state forms that are rejected is likely to be modest since most voter registration drives this year have been using the federal forms, experts say.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on the decision.

Although the Supreme Court turned aside the GOP’s most significant requests, former President Donald Trump hailed the ruling as a victory and insisted it amounted to a bar on undocumented immigrants voting, although longstanding federal law already bars all noncitizens from voting in federal elections regardless of their immigration status.

“The Supreme Court just ruled that you're not allowed to have illegal aliens vote — just came out,” the Republican presidential nominee said during an appearance in Arizona near the U.S.-Mexico border. “I give great credit to the Supreme Court. They have great courage in doing what they're doing.”

Republicans have argued that verification of citizenship is needed to prevent foreigners from voting in U.S. elections. Trump has claimed, without evidence, that millions of undocumented immigrants voted in the 2016 presidential election and that such fraud continued in 2020.

While noncitizens sometimes make it onto the voting rolls due to practices like registration in conjunction with drivers licenses, there’s no evidence of noncitizens voting in large numbers.