United States: Partial win for Republicans seeking to implement proof of citizenship requirement for voting: Supreme Court from Thursday by 5-4.
The court was being petitioned to permit enforcement of parts of Arizona law that require proof of citizenship for purposes of voting in the presidential election and when voting by mail.
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The Republican Party of Arizona mentioned on August 15 that it had filed the emergency application appeal from the United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit “in support of HB 2492, our law requiring proof of citizenship to vote in presidential elections.”
A federal judge had, however, blocked the enforcement of the law, and that led to the appellants taking the matter to the high court.
According to the Arizona GOP tweet, “The Constitution gives states the power to set voter qualifications, and Arizona is leading the charge to ensure ONLY CITIZENS vote in our elections,” as Fox News reported.
“This case has the potential to prevent non-citizen voting once and for all, which should have been the case all along,” it continued.
RNC emergency application
Republican National Committee’s emergency application for a stay says that voter integrity is a “problem” that has remained unsolved especially due to the large number of ‘illegal aliens’ in the country.
As for the votes on the ruling, Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, and Justice Gorsuch would have wished to grant the application in toto while on the other side of the fence, Justice Sotomayor, Justice Kagan, Justice Barrett, and Justice Jackson would have wished to dismiss the application in full.
On balance, the swing votes were cast by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh, whose dissents, however, offered some of the same conditions, as Fox News reported.
The now-stalled 2022 state law demanding proof of citizenship was arrived at the courts by civil rights groups and the Arizona Democratic Party.
A decision delivered by the Supreme Court in 2013 suppressed the freedom of states to place such restrictions when voting in federal elections.