Conservative court upholds restrictions on voting in Arizona

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld voting restrictions in Arizona in a decision that could make it harder to challenge other states' voting limits put in place by Republican lawmakers following last year's elections.

The 6-3 ruling by the conservative-majority court fueled new calls from Democrats to pass federal legislation, blocked by Senate Republicans, that would counter the new state laws and make Supreme Court changes that include expanding the nine-justice bench.

The court reversed a lower court ruling in deciding that Arizona's regulations on who can return early ballots for another person and for the state's refusal to count ballots cast in the wrong precinct are not racially discriminatory.

The federal appeals court in San Francisco had held that the measures disproportionately affected Black, Hispanic and Native American voters in violation of a part of the landmark Voting Rights Act known as Section 2.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the conservative majority that the state's interest in the integrity of elections justified the measures.

The court rejected the idea that showing that a state law disproportionately affects minority voters is enough to prove a violation of law.

In a scathing dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the court was weakening the federal voting rights law for the second time in eight years.

"What is tragic here is that the Court has (yet again) rewritten — in order to weaken — a statute that stands as a monument to America's greatness, and protects against its basest impulses.