#ANIMUS VOX YOUTUBE SERIES#
Barrett suggested that Brnovich’s approach would make it too easy for a state to disenfranchise racial minorities, so long as it enacted a series of laws that each disenfranchised a relatively small group of voters. Kavanaugh suggested that a state law might violate the Voting Rights Act if it imposes unnecessary burdens on racial minorities. Roberts, for example, appeared unconvinced that a key prong of Brnovich’s argument could be squared with the text of the Voting Rights Act. After Carvin conceded that a state could not require every ballot to be cast at a country club, Barrett warned him that his argument “has some contradictions in it.”īrnovich ran into similar trouble when he stepped up to the podium. But several key justices appeared reluctant to go as far as Carvin and Brnovich asked them to go.Ĭhief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett - all conservatives - each expressed concerns that Carvin’s proposed test either wasn’t workable or contradicted the text of the Voting Rights Act. There may very well be five votes - or even more than five votes - to uphold the two Arizona laws at issue in Brnovich. States would gain a broad power to disenfranchise voters of color, so long as they were somewhat clever about how they did so.īy the end of Tuesday’s arguments in Brnovich, however, it appeared unlikely that these attempts to neutralize the Voting Rights Act will prevail. Under Brnovich’s standard, that law might not violate the Voting Rights Act’s protections against race discrimination because the state did not cause non-white voters to prefer other genres of music.īoth Carvin and Brnovich’s briefs, in other words, proposed reading a key prong of the Voting Rights Act so narrowly that it would become virtually meaningless. Suppose that Arizona had passed a law limiting the franchise to country music fans, on the theory that white voters are more likely to listen to country music than voters of color. Taken to its logical extreme, this proposed rule could permit truly outlandish attempts to restrict voting. As Brnovich argued, the restriction on out-of-precinct voting should be upheld because “the fact that a ballot cast by a voter outside of his or her assigned precinct is discarded does not cause minorities to vote out-of-precinct disproportionately.”
Michael Carvin, a lawyer for the Arizona Republican Party, argued in his brief that states have broad power to enact laws restricting the “time, place, or manner” where voters cast their ballots - though he rapidly backpedaled after Justice Elena Kagan suggested that this proposed rule would allow a state to require all voters to cast their ballots at, say, country clubs.Īrizona’s Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich, meanwhile, suggested in his brief that states that wish to disenfranchise voters of color may take advantage of existing demographic disparities to target racial minorities, so long as the state does not create those disparities. The second prohibits many forms of “ballot collection,” where a voter gives their absentee ballot to another person, who then delivers that ballot to the election office so it can be counted.
One law requires election officials to discard ballots that are cast in the wrong precinct. The case involves two Arizona laws that make it harder for some voters to cast a ballot. Democratic National Committee, a case the Supreme Court heard on Tuesday, and saw an opportunity to stick a knife in the Voting Rights Act - potentially eliminating any meaningful safeguards against racist voting laws in the process. Two separate teams of Republican lawyers looked at Brnovich v.
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