SCOTUS affirms Virginia cleanup of voter rolls

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked a lower court’s decision that would have required more than 1,500 people to be restored as registered voters. The litigation stemmed from an Aug. 7 executive order from Virginia Gov. Youngkin instructing election officials to expunge non-citizen names from the state’s voter rolls. The Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights and the League of Women Voters of Virginia sued the state of Virginia over the plan to remove the people from its voter rolls.

The Department of Justice also sued Virginia, alleging it violated the National Voter Registration Act by removing the voters within 90 days of an election. Virginia denied any wrongdoing, and said it was following a nearly two-decade-old state law requiring it to clean its voter rolls before elections.

What occurred in the lower court rulings on the cases? Initially, a federal court judge ruled that Virginia illegally removed the voters from its registration lists. Virginia appealed the decision to the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeals court sided with lower court judge. Virginia’s attorney general then said he would take the fight to the Supreme Court which on Wednesday granted the state the ability to remove the voters.

Dig deeper: Listen to Leo Briceno and Carolina Lumetta’s report on The World and Everything in It podcast about election integrity.