■ A court fight against Georgia’s voting overhaul is no sure thing. 4A

Conservative legal system to decide on Gop-led voting bills

WASHINGTON — Court challenges to Republican-led election restrictions in Georgia and elsewhere face an uncertain road in a legal system that has grown more conservative in recent years.

National legislation favored by Democrats could counteract some state restrictions, but that too is no sure thing in a closely divided Congress.

Groups opposed to Georgia’s sweeping overhaul of election laws filed suit in federal court in Atlanta on Thursday, a few hours after Gov. Brian Kemp signed the new law. They say restrictions on voting in person or by mail, including a requirement to have voter identification to cast an absentee ballot, violate the constitutional rights of all Georgians and also disproportionately affect voters of color in violation of the seminal Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Georgia law was enacted less than three months after the state elected two Democrats to the Senate, handing the party control of the chamber. In November, President Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since 1992.

It is one of a wave of Gop-backed election bills introduced in states around the country.

Jason Snead, a conservative supporter of the law, called it “a pretty reasonable set of proposals” that will “continue the tradition of keeping it easy to vote and hard to cheat.”

Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California at Irvine law school, said the outcome is hard to predict. “Many of the things that the bill does are in line with what other states already do, so the question is whether a contraction of voting rights for bad purposes is illegal, even if the contraction does not go as far as some other states (or that Georgia considered),” Hasen wrote in an email.

Courts have made it harder to prove intentional racial discrimination, and “a partisan intent, even if it overlaps with race, may well not be enough,” Hasen said.

The Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, likely would have the final word on challenges to restrictions in Georgia and elsewhere.

But Congress could render the court fight virtually meaningless.

“The Constitution gives Congress broad powers to set the rules for conducting federal elections,” Hasen said, and constitutional amendments that extended the vote to Black Americans, women and 18-year-olds provide more authority for protecting voting rights.