The Voting Rights Act ruling will allow states to defend changes made to election procedures that have been recently enacted by claiming they are consistent with other state rules.Justice Samuel Alito's majority opinion does not provide a clear-cut test for future cases. It does not declare that Section 2 of 1965 Voting Rights Act (which prohibits discriminatory voting laws based on race) is unconstitutional. He stressed however that rules that are only modestly imposed on voters would not normally be considered a violation.Each voting rule imposes some kind of burden. Voting is time-consuming and requires some travel. Alito explained that in order to cast a vote, you must follow the instructions for using a machine to vote or complete a paper ballot.Alito stressed that not all practices that disadvantage minority voters will be in violation of the law.A system does not have to be equally accessible or offer equal voting rights just because there are differences in its impact. He wrote that the size of any disparity is important. It is not a good idea to artificially magnify very small differences.In a statement, President Joe Biden stated that he was deeply disappointed by the decision. The Court has done serious damage to two of most crucial provisions of the Voting rights Act of 1965 in just eight years. This law was a laborious and difficult to achieve, Biden stated.Although Alitos does not set a new standard for challenging discriminatory voting laws, it does provide some guidelines that may make it much more difficult to challenge these laws.All of the liberal courts dissented, joining Justice Elena Kagan's opinion that Thursday's ruling was part of a deep and ongoing curtailment by the high court of the 1965 landmark voting rights law.The Court has (yet another) rewritten the statute to weaken it. It is a monument to America's greatness and protects against its baset impulses. Kagan wrote. Tragic is the fact that the Court has rewritten a statute intended to end discrimination in voting.Kagan accuses conservative justices of betraying an important principle they hold dear: That statutes should always be interpreted in accordance with the text Congress has enacted.Kagan writes that the majority is concerned that the law Congress drafted is too radical and will cause too many state voting laws to be invalidated. The majority creates its own rules to limit Section 2 in multiple directions.The Voting Rights Act was amended in 1982 to include language that prohibits localities or states from using any election practice that results in the violation of voting rights based on race.In his majority opinion, Alito suggested that practices that were widespread in many states at the time would generally be allowed even if they had an adverse effect on minority voting.Alito stated that it is unlikely that Congress meant to abolish facially neutral time and place regulations. Alito also pointed out that almost all states required voters to vote in person on election day in 1982 and that absentee voting was strictly prohibited.The court did not rule out the possibility that a state's decision to return to practices from four decades ago would be valid under the VRA ban on discriminatory voting.Alito stated that while we don't need to decide whether the 1982 framework should be adhered to or returned to under 2 law, Alito said that it is important to consider the extent to which a challenged ruling has a long pedigree and is widely used in the United States.Alito also provided a guideline to help prevent future challenges to certain voting methods. He wrote that courts must take into account the voting opportunities in a state's entire voting system when assessing the burden of a challenged provision.The Justice Department sued Georgia last week over its new voting rules. Biden administration lawyers appeared to be trying not to raise any doubts about the "results test" that was added to the statute following a Supreme Court ruling in 1980.Instead, the DOJ's new suit was based entirely on the claim of the DOJ that the states' changes were motivated by the desire to reduce the voting power of African Americans. Since 1965's landmark civil rights laws, the use of the Voting Right Act to challenge discriminatory practices has been widely accepted.One activist who opposed the Georgia law complained that the court's decision was a setback.According to Nse Ufot, New Georgia Project, this ruling is a major win for white supremacy.Alitos' decision, despite such claims, also seeks to downplay the connections between partisanship & race.One Senators may have sparked the debate about mail-in voting. However, partisan motives and racial motives are different, he wrote, citing a ruling of lower courts. Although the District Court acknowledged that voting preferences may look similar to the former, it distinguished the two.Joshua Douglas, an election law professor from the University of Kentucky, stated that Alito's emphasis on Arizona's district court findings could also hinder the Department of Justice cases. Georgia could use the same defense and point to this case to say that it is politics and not race.These rulings are part of a wide push by Republican-led legislatures to consider or enact new voter laws. This is often in the name election integrity.Thursday's decision was the most closely watched case in the Voting Rights act since 2013. The justices made a 5-4 ruling that critics called a "cutting the heart out" of the law. They struck down a provision that required 15 states to amend voting procedures before they could be approved by the Justice Department or any federal court.It would have been much harder for many red states, especially with the Justice Department leadership of Biden, to adopt new voter ID requirements or changes to early voting. Although Shelby County's 2013 decision did not specifically strike down Section 5, it gutted it by eliminating the formula that determines which states need to have changes precleared.Rarely is a statute so difficult to pass. A statute has never done more to promote the highest ideals of the Nation than it did. Kagan wrote in her disapproval that few laws are more important in this moment. This Court has never treated any statute worse in the past decade.Many conservative groups, however, celebrated the decision. Garrett Bess (Vice President for Heritage Action) said that the ruling was a victory for voter confidence and election integrity.Bess said that state officials should be aware of the situation and take steps to implement similar policies in their respective states.Thursday's cases involved challenges to Arizona's 2016 law prohibiting collection of ballots by any other postal or election officials, and to the state's long-standing policy that allows counties to ignore ballots cast in person at the wrong precinct.The out-of-precinct vote ban does not affect Arizonans who have voted by mail for 80 percent. During oral arguments in March Justice Sonia Sotomayor stated that many Native Americans do not receive mail delivery to their homes and that some Hispanics living in rural areas are unable to access post offices, which can be difficult to find.She asked if you can't vote because of these reasons. If you are denied the right to vote or it results from your denial of voting due to circumstances that the state can easily remedy, then you have been denied something.Trump's Justice Department filed a brief. It did not go as far or as far as the Republicans or the state, but it largely supported their view. The department with new staff under President Joe Biden with their support with that brief was withdrawn in February.Nevertheless, at March's arguments, Ed Kneedler, Deputy Solicitor General, stood by the Trump administrations assertion that neither Arizonas nor the challenged practices in these cases were in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
