Refusing to block the block on a bar

Newsweek offers the following confusing prose, about a case out of Arizona. Italics added.

"The court [SCOTUS] issued an order related to a case raised by the Republican National Committee asking the justices to block a lower-court order that blocked enforcement of a 2022 law that would bar registered voters who have not previously provided proof of citizenship from voting in presidential elections, or by mail in any federal elections." The order declined to do so. (Subject to a qualification I'll get to later.)

All these negative signs. It's algebra. Two negative signs is a positive number. Three negative signs is a negative again. Four negative signs (counting now the underlying law as the first negative) give us a positive result again. The people whose ability to vote was contested, CAN vote.

The law says certain people can't vote.

A lower court said to Arizona "don't enforce that!" So those people can vote.

The state asked the Justices to block THAT order, allowing enforcement, dis-allowing those votes.

The court decided not to do that. So the court's decision seems to end the matter for this election cycle and the vote count will be somewhat higher than it otherwise would have been.

Got it.

Meanwhile, outside the domain of that particular sentence ... the court's order was in a manner of speaking a split one. It granted Arizona's authority to enforce a certain aspect of the law, but denied it authority to enforce another more hotly contested aspect of the law.

Specifically, the law requires people registering to vote to use a state form to provide proof of citizenship (its prospective side) and at the same time sought to bar voters who hadn't done that, who had used a standard federal form, from voting in presidential elections in that state (the disenfranchising side). The above algebra, on how the court declined to block the block on a bar, applies to the disenfranchising part of the law. The prospective side of the law has been upheld.

Then there were the dissenters, who would have denied Arizona's request in full. There were four of them. This is where we get to something intriguing.

(1) all of the Justices agreed to refuse the nub of what the RNC asked for, disenfranchisement;

(2) Five justices (almost all of the 'usual suspect' conservatives) decided to allow a victory on the prospective side;

(3) Four of the Justices --' liberals plus one -- wanted the state's defeat to be more complete.

So ... who was the plus one? Cue the Notre Dame theme song.

"Justice Sotomayor, Justice Kagan, Justice Barrett, [italics added again] and Justice Jackson would deny the application in full," the order reads. All and only the women on the court, including the Trump appointee.

Nice gender gap you got there, SCOTUS. The one woman within the usual conservative majority is the one Justice who splits off from that to join the all-women dissenting group.

Anyway, you can get beyond Newsweek by going to the full account here: SCOTUSblog

Or reading the decision here: 082224zr_n75p.pdf (supremecourt.gov) It is brief and unsigned. The Court is on its summer break, after all.

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