Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-1257_g204.pdf
Page Number: 42

36 

BRNOVICH v. DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 

Opinion of the Court 

early mail-in voting.  Ibid.22 
  That  debate,  the  District  Court  concluded,  was  sincere 
and led to the passage of HB 2023 in 2016.  Proponents of 
the bill repeatedly argued that mail-in ballots are more sus-
ceptible to fraud than in-person voting.  Ibid.  The bill found 
support from a few minority officials and organizations, one 
of which expressed concern that ballot collectors were tak-
ing  advantage  of  elderly  Latino  voters.    Ibid.    And  while 
some opponents of the bill accused Republican legislators of 
harboring  racially  discriminatory  motives,  that  view  was 
not uniform.  See ibid.  One Democratic state senator pith-
ily  described  the  “ ‘problem’ ” HB  2023  aimed  to  “ ‘solv[e]’ ” 
as  the  fact  that  “ ‘one  party  is  better  at  collecting  ballots 
than  the  other  one.’ ”    Id.,  at  882  (quoting  Tr.  Exh.  25,  at 
35). 
  We are more than satisfied that the District Court’s in-
terpretation of the evidence is permissible.  The spark for 
the debate over mail-in voting may well have been provided 
by  one  Senator’s  enflamed  partisanship,  but partisan  mo-
tives are not the same as racial motives.  See Cooper v. Har-
ris, 581 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2017) (slip op., at 19–20).  The 
District Court noted that the voting preferences of members 
of a racial group may make the former look like the latter, 
but  it  carefully  distinguished  between  the  two.    See  329 
F. Supp. 3d, at 879, 882.  And while the District Court rec-
ognized that the “racially-tinged” video helped spur the de-
bate  about  ballot  collection,  it  found  no  evidence  that  the 
legislature as a whole was imbued with racial motives.  Id., 
at 879–880. 

—————— 

22 The District Court also noted prior attempts on the part of the Ari-
zona Legislature to regulate or limit third-party ballot collection in 2011 
and 2013.  It reasonably concluded that any procedural irregularities in 
those attempts had less probative value for inferring the purpose behind 
HB 2023 because the bills were passed “during different legislative ses-
sions  by  a  substantially  different  composition  of  legislators.”    329 
F. Supp. 3d, at 881.