Question Presented
Does the National Voter Registration Act or a federal consent decree prohibit Arizona from requiring voter-registration applicants to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship, and does the National Voter Registration Act prohibit Arizona from canceling the registrations of non-citizens within 90 days of a federal election?
Facts of the Case
Arizona has required U.S. citizenship as a qualification to vote since statehood in 1912. In 2004, Arizona voters passed Proposition 200, which required voter-registration applicants to provide satisfactory documentary proof of citizenship. That requirement reached the Supreme Court in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona (2013), where the Court held the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) preempted Arizona’s demand that proof of citizenship accompany the federal voter-registration form, but the Court simultaneously recognized that state-developed registration forms may require information the federal form does not, including proof of citizenship.
Seizing on that opening, Arizona’s legislature enacted H.B. 2492 and H.B. 2243 in 2022, which required applicants using the state registration form to submit documentary proof of citizenship (such as a birth certificate, passport, or driver’s license) and directed county recorders to reject state forms lacking that documentation. The 2022 laws also required county recorders to periodically cross-check citizenship databases and cancel the registrations of any individuals confirmed to be non-citizens. A separate wrinkle arose from a 2018 consent decree (the LULAC decree) in which a prior Arizona Secretary of State and the Maricopa County Recorder had agreed, without any finding of a federal violation, to register state-form applicants lacking proof of citizenship as either full-ballot or federal-only voters depending on whether citizenship could be confirmed through motor vehicle records.
The district court retained jurisdiction over the LULAC decree only until December 31, 2020, and the decree bound only those two officials. Eight groups of plaintiffs—including the Democratic National Committee, the Arizona Democratic Party, the federal government, and several nonprofit organizations—filed consolidated pre-enforcement challenges to Arizona’s 2022 laws in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, arguing the laws violated the NVRA, the LULAC consent decree, the Civil Rights Act, and the Equal Protection Clause; the Republican National Committee intervened as a defendant. The district court ruled largely for plaintiffs, enjoining Arizona’s proof-of-citizenship requirement for state-form applicants (relying on the LULAC consent decree) and holding that the NVRA’s 90-day quiet period barred Arizona from systematically canceling noncitizen registrations within 90 days of a federal election.
The RNC and Arizona legislative leaders appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which affirmed the district court’s injunction in a divided panel opinion issued February 25, 2025, and denied rehearing en banc on September 22, 2025; the Supreme Court had previously granted a partial emergency stay allowing Arizona to enforce its proof-of-citizenship requirement for state-form applicants during the pendency of the litigation.