On Wednesday, October 30th, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled by a 6-3 vote to allow Virginia to remove approximately 1,600 non-citizens from its voter rolls before the November 5th election.
The decision overturns a lower court’s temporary halt on the action.
Conservative justices on the Supreme Court voted in favor, while liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Jackson Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
The Supreme Court’s order is not a final ruling on whether Virginia can carry out similar removal plans before future elections. However, Wednesday’s ruling means Virginia is not required to restore the names of foreign individuals removed from the voter list and allows for more similar voter registrations to be terminated before November 5th. Voter registration is based on citizenship data from the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).
Virginia is the second state in recent weeks to face resistance for removing foreign citizens from voter lists in the final weeks of the campaign. Earlier, a federal judge halted Alabama Secretary of State, a Republican, from removing over 3,000 individuals from its voter list. The state did not immediately appeal.
The legal dispute in Virginia centers on whether the removal of non-U.S. citizens is “systematic” or based on individual investigations into voter eligibility. The federal National Voter Registration Act prohibits systematic cancellation of voter qualifications within 90 days of an election to prevent eligible voters from being wrongly disenfranchised without sufficient time to resolve identity issues.
Virginia states that they act based on information provided by individuals to the DMV, including the option box indicating they are not U.S. citizens on their application forms.
The plaintiffs in this case are the Department of Justice and private advocacy groups. They argue that DMV data may be erroneous if residents later acquire U.S. citizenship or mistakenly check the box. They claim names of U.S. citizens were identified on the removed voter list.
Virginia’s attorneys acknowledge the possibility of such errors but insist on ensuring only eligible voters are registered to vote, which is crucial for the state.
The controversy stems from an executive order signed by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, on August 7th, 90 days before the election. The order required the state election office to demonstrate a system that updates the voter list daily, including removing names based on DMV citizenship data. The removal process has been in place for years but usually conducted monthly.
A federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, issued an order halting the executive order on October 25th, and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the state’s request to cancel the order before the upcoming election.
The case is known as Beals v. Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights, 24A407.
When a lower court judge ruled that Virginia’s large-scale voter registration cancellations violated the federal law’s 90-day “quiet period,” Virginia quickly appealed to the Supreme Court.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court granted Virginia’s request, without providing an explanation for the dissent from the three liberal justices.
Virginia is not a battleground state in the election, but the case has become a catalyst for the Republican Party in regulating elections, aiming to raise concerns regarding non-U.S. citizens voting.
However, researchers and state and local election officials believe such occurrences are relatively rare. The case is also one of the few election-related cases initiated by the Department of Justice.