WASHINGTON (CN) — In an apparent 6-3 decision on Wednesday, the Supreme Court granted Virginia’s emergency request to toss 1,600 people off the state’s voter rolls, days before Election Day.
The conservative majority did not explain their order. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
In two lower court rulings, the state had been found to have illegally purged voting rolls during the 90-day “quiet period” before an election. Virginia asked the Supreme Court to reverse, claiming the decisions forced the state to put noncitizens, who are ineligible to vote, back on the voting rolls.
“Not only will the Commonwealth of Virginia be irreparably harmed absent a stay, so will its voters and the public at large,” Virginia Solicitor General Erika Maley wrote in the state’s emergency appeal.
At the behest of Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, Virginia began eliminating voter registrations for anyone who self-identified as a noncitizen in Department of Motor Vehicle records. However, the Justice Department and immigrant rights groups said outdated DMV records were more likely to disenfranchise legitimate voters.
U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said Virginia’s elections department used a systematic program to remove voter registrations based on responses to citizenship questions from the DMV without an individual assessment of whether or not the response was accurate.
“That lack of individualized process explains why applicants’ program ensnared many voting-eligible citizens,” Prelogar said.
A lower court confirmed these concerns, finding that some of the 1,600 voters tossed from voter rolls were eligible citizens. The Fourth Circuit affirmed, ordering Virginia to reinstate the registrations.
Virginia argued that noncitizens were not protected by the National Voter Registration Act’s quiet period protections because they were never eligible to vote in the first place.
“If a person cannot become a ‘registrant’ because he is not and cannot be an ‘eligible applicant,’ then he cannot become a ‘voter,’” Maley wrote. “And if the person is not a ‘voter,’ eligible or otherwise, then he is not protected under the Quiet Period Provision.”
Immigrant rights groups said the state’s beliefs about voters’ citizenship status are not supported by evidence. According to the groups, a Loudoun County voter was removed from the rolls despite having a “new citizen” stamp on their 2015 voter registration application.
