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Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch of the United States Supreme Court voiced opposition to their colleagues’ decision to support the Biden administration in an appeal involving an abortion issue this week. The majority of the high court allowed the federal government to retain family planning monies from Oklahoma due to the state’s refusal to refer pregnant women seeking an abortion to a national hotline.
Although the order states that Oklahoma’s emergency application was denied and that Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch would have accepted it if they had their way, it doesn’t explain why the application was denied. That lack of justification is typical in the court’s so-called shadow docket, where matters are decided swiftly without thorough preparation or hearings.
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It was noted by MSN that it was not surprising that Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch diverged from their colleagues in the latest abortion-related action, following the court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022. Although these three justices were part of the five-member majority in the Dobbs decision, along with Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, they are considered the most consistent votes in favor of anti-abortion litigants.
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The outlet further pointed out that this was evident in the recent term when the court allowed emergency abortions to proceed in Idaho, despite dissent from these same three justices. In a previous ruling from earlier in the summer, these three justices stated that had the case been RNC v. Mi Familia Vota, which involved a different topic, they would have wholeheartedly sided with the Republicans.
That was the latest indication that, before the election in November, voting rights were highly precarious. The other Republican selections to the court may determine how far the court will go overall, even though those three judges may be willing to bend to Republican demands. The Supreme Court’s next term appears to begin in October, and Tuesday’s ruling suggests that abortion-related cases will fall under its jurisdiction as well.
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In another case that grabbed news last month, the U.S. Supreme Court partially upheld a Republican petitioner’s claim that an Arizona statute requiring voters to present evidence of citizenship before to casting a ballot was unconstitutional.
Ahead of the hotly contested state elections in 2024, the decision is regarded as a major victory for election integrity. According to Fox News, the court was petitioned to permit the implementation of Arizona law’s requirements for official proof of citizenship to vote in the presidential election, including when voting by mail.
While the U.S. Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit was considering an appeal, the Republican Party of Arizona announced on August 15 that it had filed the emergency application, our law requiring proof of citizenship to vote in presidential elections. The appeal resulted from a previous ruling by a federal judge that blocked the law’s implementation.
The Arizona GOP tweeted that the Constitution grants states the authority to set voter qualifications, emphasizing that Arizona is taking the lead to ensure that only citizens can vote in elections. They highlighted that this case has the potential to permanently prevent non-citizen voting, which they argued should have always been the standard.
The Republican National Committee has filed an emergency stay application, claiming that voter integrity is an urgent matter that has not yet received adequate attention, especially given the number of undocumented immigrants in the nation.
Fox claims that Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch would have fully approved the application in their decision. Nevertheless, Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett, and Jackson, the justices, would have categorically rejected it. Thus, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh presented a sort of compromise with their crucial votes.
According to CNN, a lower court’s ruling that stopped the implementation of a rule requiring voters to show proof of U.S. citizenship to cast a ballot in this year’s presidential election was maintained by the Supreme Court. The court did, however, permit the state to require that prospective voters provide proof of citizenship before completing a state registration form.
The report noted that this was a partial win for Republicans, as proof of citizenship would be required for new voters in certain situations. Voters unable to document their citizenship status would still be allowed to register using a federal form.
The Supreme Court limited states’ authority to demand citizenship documentation from anyone who registered using the federal form in 2013. According to CNN, the Court said that states could not refuse voters the opportunity to vote in federal elections under the National Voter Registration Act if the federal form did not demand proof of citizenship.
Republicans contended that Congress had no right to impose regulations on state-by-state vote-by-mail programs or voter registration requirements about presidential elections. According to the outlet, they argued that states, including Arizona, are entitled to require evidence of citizenship to cast a ballot in municipal and state elections.
A 2018 consent decree from a different litigation was also implicated in this case; it introduced a fail-safe mechanism for people who lacked official citizenship documentation. The 2022 law eliminated this mechanism.
When processing voter registrations, local election authorities were mandated by the order to verify citizenship records in the state’s DMV database. The person was fully registered if records verifying their citizenship could be located. If not, the voter could still cast a ballot in federal elections even though they were not registered to vote in state elections.
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