Supreme Court upholds restrictive Arizona voting laws in test of Voting Rights Act

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld two election laws in the 2020 battleground state of Arizona that challengers said make it harder for minorities to vote.

The case was an important test for what's left of one of the nation's most important civil rights laws, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which the Supreme Court scaled back in 2013. A remaining provision allows lawsuits claiming that voting changes would put minority voters at a disadvantage in electing candidates of their choice.

Civil rights groups were hoping the Supreme Court would use the Arizona case to strengthen their ability to challenge the dozens of post-2020 voting restrictions imposed by Republican legislatures in the wake of Donald Trump's defeat.

The 6-3 ruling Thursday, which was split between the conservative and liberal justices, said Arizona did not violate the Voting Rights Act when it passed a law in 2016 allowing only voters, their family members or their caregivers to collect and deliver a completed ballot. The court also upheld a longstanding state policy requiring election officials to throw out ballots accidentally cast in the wrong precincts.

Lawyers for the state said they wanted to prohibit "unlimited third-party ballot harvesting," which they called a commonsense way to protect the secret ballot. They said the out-of-precinct rule was intended to prevent fraudulent multiple voting.