WASHINGTON — A divided Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled for Virginia Republicans, clearing the way for an election-eve purge of about 1,600 registered voters who were suspected of being noncitizens.
In a 6-3 vote, the court granted an emergency appeal from Virginia’s attorney general and set aside rulings by a federal judge who called the last-minute purge a “clear violation” of federal law.
The six justices in the majority were all Republican appointees. The three Democratic appointees — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented.
In a fast-track appeal, Virginia Atty. Gen. Jason Miyares, a Republican, said it would violate “common sense” and “irreparably injure Virginia’s sovereignty” to keep noncitizens on the voting rolls.
Federal law says states may not “systematically remove” registered voters from the rolls in the 90 days prior to a federal election. Congress, in passing the law, said the danger is that voters will go to the polls on election day and discover they are no longer registered.
In early August, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an order to speed up the process of removing voters from the rolls who were flagged as possible noncitizens in state databases. They included residents or people with the same name who had checked a box when renewing their driver’s license that said they were noncitizens.
Shortly after voting rights advocates learned of the order, they discovered about two dozen longtime legal voters who had been wrongly removed from the rolls.
They sued along with the Justice Department, and a federal judge blocked Youngkin’s order on Oct. 18.
U.S. Judge Patricia Giles said the state’s data-based program is a “clear violation” of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, and she ordered the state to restore the affected voters to the rolls. She noted, however, the state may cancel the registration of individuals who are shown to be noncitizens or otherwise ineligible.
In a 3-0 decision, the 4th Circuit Court refused to lift the judge’s order on Oct. 27.
Virginia’s state attorneys filed an appeal with the high court on Monday, arguing the federal law that forbids election-eve purges “does not even apply to the removal of noncitizens. … This election-eve injunction is thus based on legal error.”
U.S. Solicitor Gen. Elizabeth Prelogar had urged the court to deny the appeal. She said the state clearly violated a federal law “enacted to prevent the very type of 11th-hour disenfranchisement and confusion that [state officials] have caused here. “