(LibertySociety.com) – The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a major win for election integrity advocates, President Trump, and Republicans on Wednesday by allowing Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) to continue removing noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls. This decision temporarily upholds Youngkin’s 2024 executive order aimed at preventing noncitizens from voting in the upcoming election, which has already removed thousands of names from Virginia’s voter lists.
Governor Youngkin’s actions began shortly after he took office in January 2022. By July 2024, his administration had removed over 6,300 noncitizens from voter rolls, a process enabled by a Virginia law that has been in effect since 2006. In August, Youngkin issued an executive order instructing election officials to maintain this program leading up to November’s election. Under this order, election officials sent letters to individuals flagged as noncitizens based on driver’s license applications, giving them 14 days to provide proof of citizenship before being removed from the voter rolls. As a result, an additional 1,600 names have been removed this year.
The Department of Justice (DOJ), led by the Biden administration, filed a lawsuit against Youngkin, arguing that his executive order violated the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA). Specifically, the DOJ cited the “quiet period” in the NVRA, which limits “systematic” removal of voters from registration lists within 90 days of an election. The DOJ argued that some individuals may have since become citizens or could have mistakenly checked the noncitizen box.
Youngkin’s legal team, supported by Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (R), countered that the NVRA’s quiet period restriction does not apply in this case since each removal was individually verified rather than part of a “systematic” process. They argued that the removals were specific to each person’s documented status as a noncitizen.
The Supreme Court’s ruling came after an initial decision favoring the DOJ’s case, placing a temporary stay on the lower court’s ruling and allowing Youngkin’s voter roll program to proceed. In a 6-3 vote, the Court sided with Youngkin, enabling him to continue the removal of noncitizens from the voter lists while the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reviews the case. Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson voted against the stay.
Ambassador Ken Blackwell, chairman of the Center for Election Integrity at the America First Policy Institute, praised the decision as a “spectacular victory for election integrity and the rule of law.”
The case, Beals v. Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights, could be returned to the Supreme Court for a formal hearing in the future, as the appeal process unfolds.
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