A divided Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a controversial Arizona law that limits how voters may return absentee ballots, weighing into a raging debate over voting rights with a ruling that appeared to make it more difficult to challenge a growing number of state laws restricting access to the ballot box.

Associate Justice Samuel Alito wrote the opinion for a 6-3 majority, joined by the court's conservatives. Associate Justice Elena Kagan wrote a dissent, joined by the court's liberals, that described the majority opinion as "tragic."

The case, the most significant to deal with voting rights to come before the court since 2013, dealt with two provisions of Arizona's voting law approved long before the 2020 election. State officials passed a law in 2016 barring unions and advocacy organizations from collecting voters' mail-in ballots, a practice that critics call "ballot harvesting."

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