LDF Files U.S. Supreme Court Amicus Brief Opposing Restrictive Arizona Voter Registration Practices and Voter Purges

Read a PDF of our statement here.

The Legal Defense Fund (LDF) today filed an amicus brief before the U.S. Supreme Court in Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota. LDF urged the Supreme Court to affirm the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals previous ruling that Arizona's attempts to systematically purge thousands of registered voters violates the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), including the 90-day quiet period provision, which prevents a state from purging voters in the three months before a federal election.

The NVRA was enacted to stop systematic purges before Election Day and to end reregistration and identification requirements that states adopted in the Jim Crow era to disenfranchise Black voters and other voters of color. These documentary proof of citizenship requirements and voter purges mirror the discriminatory practices that the NVRA sought to root out. LDF also argued today that Arizona's documentary proof of citizenship requirement violates a federal court order and settlement.

"Congress enacted the NVRA to remove onerous voter registration requirements and prevent systemic voter purges before federal elections that have, from their inception, been used to disenfranchise eligible voters of color," said Kathryn Sadasivan, Senior Counsel at the Legal Defense Fund. "Arizona's actions in this case continue a long tradition of disenfranchisement that Congress sought to prevent in enacting the NVRA. That the State assured its citizens it would prevent such an unjust result in a binding federal consent decree only reinforces that the Supreme Court should affirm the decisions below."

Federal courts have repeatedly found that attempts to institute documentary proof of citizenship requirements and to remove alleged non-citizens from the voter rolls yield inaccurate results that disproportionately disenfranchise eligible Black voters. For example, documentary proof of citizenship requirements disproportionately disenfranchise Black people and other people of color because they are less likely to have access to documents like birth certifications and passports. Likewise, the citizenship data that states rely on to identify alleged non-citizens are often out-of-date and tend to purge newly naturalized citizens.

Congress has established clear rules for preventing registration of ineligible voters and for keeping registration rolls up to date. The NVRA balances these concerns while ensuring no eligible voter is denied the right to vote.

The NVRA was designed to increase voter participation and turnout in federal elections, and documentary proof of citizenship requirements and error-prone purges before federal elections wholly thwart that goal.

Visit here to learn more about the consequences of faulty voter purge programs.

Visit here to learn about the dangers of restrictive documentary proof of citizenship requirements in voting.

###

Founded in 1940, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF)is the nation's first civil rights legal organization. LDF has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957, though it was founded under the leadership of Thurgood Marshall while he was at the NAACP. LDF's Thurgood Marshall Institute (TMI) is a division of LDF that undertakes innovative research and houses LDF's archive. In all media attributions, please refer to us as the Legal Defense Fund or LDF (do not include NAACP) and refer to the Institute as LDF's Thurgood Marshall Institute or TMI.