US Supreme Court rules in favour of voter restrictions

The ruling could make it easier for other states to impose rules on voting that are widely seen as disenfranchising Black, Latino and Indigenous voters.

The United States Supreme Court has endorsed two Republican-backed ballot restrictions in Arizona that a lower court found had disproportionately burdened Black, Latino and Native American voters, handing a defeat to voting rights advocates and Democrats who had challenged the measures. The 6-3 ruling on Thursday, with the court’s conservative justices in the majority, held that the restrictions on early ballot collection by third parties and where absentee ballots may be cast did not violate the Voting Rights Act, a landmark 1965 federal law that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. The court’s three liberal justices dissented from the decision.