The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday reinstated part of an Arizona voter law that requires documented proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote.
The ruling came in response to a request from the Republican National Committee and Arizona Republicans. In a 5-4 decision, the justices agreed to reinstate a provision of the law that had been blocked by a federal judge following legal challenges from Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration and advocacy groups.
This decision comes just ahead of the November 5 election, where Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris faces off against Republican former President Donald Trump, who continues to falsely claim that his 2020 election defeat was due to fraud.
Arizona’s Republican-controlled legislature enacted new restrictions on voter registration in 2022. The law mandates that applicants submitting a federal registration form must provide evidence of U.S. citizenship to vote in presidential elections or vote by mail in any federal election. Voter registrants who use a separate, state-created form face even stricter requirements. Without proof of U.S. citizenship, state applications are completely rejected, and officials who fail to enforce this face a minor felony charge.
The Supreme Court’s ruling reinstated the restriction related to the state voter registration form but left intact a judicial decision blocking the provision that sought to tighten limits on the federal form.
Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch, partially granted the Republicans’ request, though Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch indicated they would have granted the entire request. Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, along with conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, would have denied the request in full.
When Republican then-Governor Doug Ducey signed the legislation in March 2022, he claimed the measure balanced voting accessibility with election security, stating, “Election integrity means counting every lawful vote and prohibiting any attempt to illegally cast a vote.”
The Biden administration sued to block the Arizona law in July 2022, arguing that it is superseded by the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which requires states to register voters for federal elections after they submit the federal registration form, which requires a declaration of U.S. citizenship under penalty of perjury but does not require documentary proof.
A separate legal challenge argued that the Arizona law violated a 2018 court-approved settlement requiring state election officials to register voters who lack documented proof of U.S. citizenship for federal elections, regardless of whether they use the federal or state form.
The Republican National Committee and Arizona’s top Republican lawmakers intervened to defend the law. In September 2023, Phoenix-based U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton sided with the Biden administration and other plaintiffs, blocking the state from barring federal-form applicants from voting for president or by mail or rejecting state-form applications for lacking citizenship documentation.
A three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed the case and declined to halt Bolton’s ruling, prompting an emergency Supreme Court filing from the Republican National Committee and Arizona Republicans. Arizona’s attorney general and secretary of state, both Democrats, opposed the Republicans’ request to the justices.
Arizona, which is expected to be one of the most competitive states in the November election, has been a focal point in the U.S. battle over voting rights. A Republican review of the 2020 presidential election, widely criticized, found no evidence of irregularities that marred Biden’s narrow victory over Trump.
In 2005, Arizona enacted a law requiring new voters to provide proof of citizenship, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that the state could not impose that requirement on those who used a federal form to register. Since then, the state has allowed those voters to participate only in federal elections, not state or local races. As of July 1, Arizona had more than 42,000 “federal only” registered voters, according to state data.
Earlier this year, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a similar bill requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote in elections, but it stalled in the Democratic-majority U.S. Senate.
