diff --git a/bagit.py b/bagit.py
index 944bf94..32cfb9b 100755
--- a/bagit.py
+++ b/bagit.py
@@ -1,8 +1,6 @@
 #!/usr/bin/env python
 # -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
 
-from __future__ import absolute_import, division, print_function, unicode_literals
-
 import argparse
 import codecs
 import gettext
@@ -42,10 +40,8 @@ def find_locale_dir():
 TRANSLATION_CATALOG = gettext.translation(
     "bagit-python", localedir=find_locale_dir(), fallback=True
 )
-if sys.version_info < (3,):
-    _ = TRANSLATION_CATALOG.ugettext
-else:
-    _ = TRANSLATION_CATALOG.gettext
+
+_ = TRANSLATION_CATALOG.gettext
 
 MODULE_NAME = "bagit" if __name__ == "__main__" else __name__
 
@@ -1039,22 +1035,10 @@ def posix_multiprocessing_worker_initializer():
 # is consistency since the input value will be preserved:
 
 
-def normalize_unicode_py3(s):
+def normalize_unicode(s):
     return unicodedata.normalize("NFC", s)
 
 
-def normalize_unicode_py2(s):
-    if isinstance(s, str):
-        s = s.decode("utf-8")
-    return unicodedata.normalize("NFC", s)
-
-
-if sys.version_info > (3, 0):
-    normalize_unicode = normalize_unicode_py3
-else:
-    normalize_unicode = normalize_unicode_py2
-
-
 def build_unicode_normalized_lookup_dict(filenames):
     """
     Return a dictionary mapping unicode-normalized filenames to as-encoded
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 49db106..7cd2d39 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -24,6 +24,10 @@ Homepage = "https://libraryofcongress.github.io/bagit-python/"
 
 [tool]
 
+[tool.ruff]
+target-version = "py38"
+
+
 [tool.setuptools_scm]
 
 [tool.isort]
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index aaed63a..15c91b4 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -10,10 +10,6 @@
 
 from setuptools import setup
 
-if sys.version_info < (2, 7):
-    print("Python 2.7 or higher is required")
-    sys.exit(1)
-
 description = "Create and validate BagIt packages"
 
 
diff --git a/test.py b/test.py
index b5b4252..1e7c22f 100644
--- a/test.py
+++ b/test.py
@@ -266,9 +266,7 @@ def test_validation_completeness_error_details(self):
 
     def test_bom_in_bagit_txt(self):
         bag = bagit.make_bag(self.tmpdir)
-        BOM = codecs.BOM_UTF8
-        if sys.version_info[0] >= 3:
-            BOM = BOM.decode("utf-8")
+        BOM = codecs.BOM_UTF8.decode("utf-8")
         with open(j(self.tmpdir, "bagit.txt"), "r") as bf:
             bagfile = BOM + bf.read()
         with open(j(self.tmpdir, "bagit.txt"), "w") as bf: