The U.S. Supreme Court struck down another one of Arizona's controversial immigration laws in June 2013 when the justices ruled that states can't demand proof of citizenship from people registering to vote in federal elections unless the states get federal or court approval to do so.
The 7-2 ruling prohibits states from changing the requirements of the voter registration form created by the federal government's “motor voter” law.
Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion, said the federal law denies states the right to change the registration forms without approve from federal officials. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito were the two dissenters.
”I would construe the law as only requiring Arizona to accept and use the form as part of its voter registration process, leaving the state free to request whatever additional information it determines is necessary to ensure that voters meet the qualifications it has the constitutional authority to establish,” Thomas wrote.
Voting rights advocates and immigrant groups praised the ruling as an important defense offundamental democratic rights of citizenship. The Obama administration also praised the decision.
”This is a strong decision protecting voters,” said Elisabeth MacNamara, the president of the League of Women Voters which had joined groups opposing the Arizona law.
Under Proposition 200 which was signed into law in 2004, Arizona officials required an Arizona driver's license issued after 1996, a U.S. birth certificate, a U.S. passport or other similar document before the state would approve the federal registration application.
The states’ role in regulating congressional elections -- while weighty and worthy of respect -- has always existed subject to the express qualification that it terminates according to federal law,” Scalia wrote and said that if Arizona wants to add the requirements to voting registration, it must ask the federal government first.
"When Congress legislates with respect to the times, places and manner of holding congressional elections, it necessarily displaces some element of a ... legal regime erected by the states," Scalia wrote.
”We conclude that the fairest reading of the statute is that a state-imposed requirement of evidence of citizenship not required by the Federal Form is ‘inconsistent with’ the NVRA’s mandate that States ‘accept and use’ the Federal Form,” Justice Scalia wrote on behalf of the court’s liberal wing, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's office had supported the law and other states with strict immigration laws – among them Georgia, Kansas, Tennessee and Alabama – also had backed the Arizona approach.
In June 2012, the Supreme Court struck down several parts of Arizona’s landmark Senate Bill 1070 that has become a model for other states’ restrictive immigration laws. But in that decision, the court let stand a provision that allows police to stop and question immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally.
Arizona officials have said they should be able to pass laws to stop non-citizens from getting on their voting rolls, though opponents say there is no evidence of widespread fraud. The Arizona voting law was part of a package that also denied some government benefits to immigrants in the country illegally and required Arizonans to produce identification before voting.
Studies have shown the laws have had a negative impact on the Arizona economy.
Gov. Brewer, who supported the law during her tenure as secretary of state, said, “We will go on.”
The liberal Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC) praised the high court's decision: "At a time when states are engaged in voter suppression efforts, today’s opinion is an important reaffirmation that the text and history of the Elections Clause give the federal government broad power to preempt state law in order to protect the right to vote in federal elections," CAC Civil Rights Director David Gans said in a statement.
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