A federal appeals court in San Francisco struck down provisions in two Arizona voting laws that aimed to increase proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration, deeming them as voter suppression. The laws were signed by former Gov. Doug Ducey and were blocked by a lower court in 2022. The court found that the laws violated the National Voter Registration Act, a 2018 consent decree, the Civil Rights Act, and the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. Conservative groups and Republican state legislators pushed for the laws amid false claims of mass noncitizen voting during the 2022 midterm elections.
Plaintiffs in the case included various nonprofit and minority groups as well as voter and civil rights organizations. The court’s ruling stated that the laws would disproportionately affect Latino and naturalized citizen voters. Despite the ruling, Republican state Sen. Warren Petersen indicated that they would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the laws.
The Arizona laws sought to impose heightened proof of citizenship requirements for both federal and state voter registration forms. People using the federal form would be registered as federal-only voters if they could not prove citizenship, while those using the state form would be rejected if they couldn’t provide proof of citizenship. The court ruling was split 2-1, with a dissent from a Trump-appointed judge.
For now, the laws are blocked, preventing their implementation. Arizona currently has a dual voter registration system that includes both state and federal forms, with the federal form not requiring disclosure of birthplaces but requiring people to swear under penalty of perjury that they are U.S. citizens.
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