A federal appeals court struck down provisions in two Arizona voting laws that sought to increase proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration, saying this week that parts of the law amounted to “voter suppression.”
The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, upholds the findings of a lower court that blocked the 2022 Arizona laws signed by then-Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican. It also sent one of the laws back to the district court to reconsider whether it was enacted with the intention to discriminate.
“We’re glad that the 9th Circuit sees these laws for what they are: anti-voter. These laws would have imposed severe, arbitrary and discriminatory burdens on Latino, Native and student voters in Arizona — undermining their freedom to vote and violating the Constitution and federal law,” said in a statement Danielle Lang, senior director of voting rights at Campaign Legal Center, which litigates to expand voter access.
The court said in its ruling Tuesday that the provisions it struck down violated the National Voter Registration Act, a 2018 consent decree between the League of United Latin American Citizens of Arizona and the state of Arizona regarding voting rights, the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Conservative groups and Republican state legislators pushed the laws during the 2022 midterm elections amid false allegations of mass voting by noncitizens.
The plaintiffs included several nonprofit groups and Latino groups, the state and national Democratic parties, Native American and Asian groups and voter and civil rights groups.
“This was a blatant attempt to suppress the vote, particularly for Latino and naturalized citizen voters. Mi Familia Vota took this to court and won,” said Hector Sánchez Barba, president and CEO of Mi Familia Vota, a plaintiff, which focuses on Latino voting and civil rights, registration and turnout.
Republican state Sen. Warren Petersen, who supported the voting laws, said on X after the ruling: “Last we checked, the Supreme Court is above the 9th Circuit. We are appealing, yet again, to the Supreme Court and will not stop until Arizona’s proof of citizenship to vote law is upheld.”
Petersen was referring to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in August that Arizona could temporarily reject state-created voter registration forms from people who did not provide proof of citizenship. But that could happen only while the case was pending before the 9th Circuit.
The latest ruling also could be challenged, but for now the laws are blocked.
Arizona has a dual system for voter registration. People can use a state form or a federal form created by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. The federal form requires checking a box indicating people are U.S. citizens under penalty of perjury, and it does not require disclosing birthplaces.
The Arizona law, H.B. 2492, “enabled government officials to require heightened proof of citizenship from federal-form and state-form applications,” the court said.
Under the law, people registering using the federal form who did not have documents to prove citizenship could be registered as federal-only voters but would not be able to vote for president or by mail, the court ruling says. And those who registered using the state form but did not have documents to prove citizenship would have been rejected, according to the ruling.
A three-judge appeals panel voted 2-1 on the ruling. Judge Patrick Bumatay, a Trump nominee in 2019, dissented.
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