Justices toss Arizona vote requirement

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out an Arizona law that requires evidence of citizenship when people register to vote, in a victory for minority-rights advocates and President Barack Obama’s administration.

The justices said Arizona’s proof-of-citizenship law runs afoul of a federal statute that sets registration requirements. The 7-2 ruling limits the role played by the states in national elections and raises questions about similar laws in three other states - Alabama, Georgia and Kansas.

A U.S. appeals court had invalidated the Arizona law, pointing to a 1993 federal statute that says states must “accept and use” a standard registration document known as the federal form. That form instructs prospective voters to swear that they are citizens, under penalty of perjury.

Writing for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia said the federal government has broad authority to displace state election rules. He pointed to the U.S. Constitution’s elections clause, which says Congress may override states in establishing the “times, places and manner of holding elections.”

“The states’ role in regulating congressional elections - while weighty and worthy of respect - has always existed subject to the express qualification that it terminates according to federal law,” Scalia wrote.

The Obama administration contended that the federal statute was designed to streamline the registration process and that the Arizona law would undermine that goal. The state law, the product of a 2004 ballot initiative, was challenged by groups including the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the League of Women Voters of Arizona and the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona.

Arizona argued that the 1993 law leaves room for states to require applicants to submit additional information along with the federal form. The state said the federal form doesn’t do enough to keep foreigners from voting.

The 1993 law lets states use their own voter-registration forms as long as they also accept the federal form. The Supreme Court ruling doesn’t prevent Arizona from continuing to demand proof of citizenship from would-be voters when they use the state registration application.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the court ruling.

Justice Anthony Kennedy agreed with Scalia on the result while saying he went too far in limiting state authority.

In a long dissent, Thomas said the Constitution gives states the power “to determine the qualifications of voters in federal elections, which necessarily includes the related power to determine whether those qualifications are satisfied.”

“Congressional legislation of voter qualifications was not part of the framers’ design,” Thomas wrote.

In a second dissent, Alito focused on the language of the federal law, which he said is ambiguous. The majority’s interpretation of it, Alito wrote, “produces truly strange results.” He said he would read the law to mean that states “accept and use” the federal form so long as it is “a meaningful part of the registration process.”

Alito likened his proposed process to the common application used by many colleges and universities. Those institutions, he said, “also require that applicants submit various additional forms and documents.”

Scalia said Arizona could pursue a different avenue for requiring proof of citizenship. Under the federal law, states may ask the Elections Assistance Commission, the agency that developed the federal form, to require additional documentation from would be voters in particular states.

In 2005, the agency, divided 2-2, failed to act on Arizona’s request to require proof of citizenship as a state-specific requirement. Arizona didn’t challenge that rebuff in court.

Scalia said Arizona could renew its request with the commission. He said the panel had already approved a similar request from Louisiana.

That procedure provides “a pathway to get an ultimate victory,” Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne said in an interview. “Once we go through these steps the Supreme Court has set out, I believe we will be able to require evidence of citizenship for people using the federal form.”

Such an effort isn’t likely to succeed, said Nina Perales, vice president of litigation for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

“Arizona would then have to actually bring forward facts and evidence showing that it needed these documentation requirements,” Perales said. She said the state hadn’t shown that any foreigners had attempted to register.

The case is Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, 12-71.

GENERIC DRUGS

In another decision Monday, the Supreme Court ruled drug makers can be sued for paying rivals to delay low-cost versions of popular medicines. The decision rewrites the rules that govern the release of generic drugs.

The 5-3 ruling is largely a victory for the Federal Trade Commission and the Obama administration, reversing a lower-court decision that had effectively insulated pharmaceutical companies from liability. The FTC says those “pay-for-delay” accords cost drug purchasers as much as $3.5 billion a year. The industry says the deals are legitimate patent settlements.

“A reverse payment, where large and unjustified, can bring with it the risk of significant anti-competitive effects,” Justice Stephen Breyer said in the court’s majority opinion.

Breyer stopped short of adopting the FTC’s proposal that such agreements should be presumed anti-competitive. He said the accords should be evaluated under a long-standing antitrust test known as the “rule of reason.”

Chief Justice John Roberts, Scalia and Thomas dissented. Roberts said the ruling will discourage settlements.

The ruling “weakens the protections afforded to innovators by patents, frustrates the public policy in favor of settling and likely undermines the very policy it seeks to promote,” Roberts wrote for the group.

“The Supreme Court’s decision is a significant victory for American consumers, American taxpayers, and free markets,” FTC Chairman Edith Ramirez said in a statement. “The court has made it clear that pay-for-delay agreements between brand and generic drug companies are subject to antitrust scrutiny.”

The brand-name drug industry’s trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said the ruling will discourage companies from reaching settlements.

“This will negatively affect patients and discourage investment in future biomedical research,” the Washington-based trade association said in a statement.

The case divided the court along ideological lines, with Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joining Breyer in the majority.

Alito didn’t take part in the case. As is the court’s custom, Alito didn’t give any reasons.

The disputed settlements stem from the economics of the pharmaceutical industry, where companies can reap billions of dollars from blockbuster drugs and then have sales plummet the moment a generic alternative appears.

The FTC says generic drugs sell for an average of 15 percent of the original price, with the brand-name company losing 90 percent of its market share by unit sales. Generics have saved purchasers $1.1 trillion in the last decade, the industry says.

Pharmaceutical patent settlements typically arise just as the maker of a generic drug is securing Food and Drug Administration approval to introduce its version of a drug. At that stage, only the brand-name company’s patents stand in the way of competition.

The FTC and its allies say they don’t object to settlements that merely set the date for the entry of a generic drug into the market. They say a payment to the generic drug maker changes the equation, suggesting the companies are agreeing to delay the generic drug, keep prices high and split what economists call “monopoly profits.”

A 2010 FTC study found that the accords cost purchasers $3.5 billion a year, a figure the drug industry contests.

The high court case centered on Androgel, a treatment for low testosterone in men that is made by Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc. The FTC sued Solvay and three generic-drug companies, including Actavis Inc.

The FTC says the price for Androgel was poised to fall at least 75 percent in 2007 after the Food and Drug Administration cleared the way for competition. Faced with the prospect of losing $125 million in annual profits, Solvay instead paid the generic drug makers as much as $42 million a year to delay their competing versions until 2015, the FTC says. At the time, Actavis was known as Watson Pharmaceuticals.

The case is Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, 12-416.

Information for this article was contributed by Greg Stohr, Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Amanda J. Crawford, Sara Forden, Susan Decker and Margaret Newkirk of Bloomberg News; and by Adam Liptak of The New York Times.