(Headline USA) The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday in favor of Virginia after the Biden administration tried to stop the state from purging its voter rolls of noncitizens.
The emergency decision was 6-3 but remained unsigned. Democrat Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson publicly dissented, indicating they would have sided against Virginia.
The Biden administration’s Justice Department sued Virginia after the state announced it would be removing 1,600 verifiable noncitizens from its voter rolls, arguing the state violated the federal National Voter Registration Act.
A district judge sided with the DOJ last week, claiming Virginia had not provided sufficient evidence that all of the removed voters “were, in fact, noncitizens.”
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares argued the non-citizens Virginia intended to remove had indicated on other government forms that they were not citizens.
Moreover, the NVRA’s protections do not apply to non-citizens, Virginia officials said.
“States are free to systematically remove noncitizens, as well as minors and fictitious persons, at any time, including within 90 days of an election, without running afoul of the NVRA,” Miyares wrote.
After the Supreme Court sided with Virginia, Youngkin praised the court’s decision as a “victory for commonsense and election fairness.”
With the presidential election just days away, Virginians deserve to have confidence in the state’s election integrity, he added.
“Virginians also know that we have paper ballots, counting machines not connected to the internet, a strong chain of custody process, signature verification, monitored and secured drop boxes, and a ‘triple check’ vote counting process to tabulate results,” Youngkin said.
The governor went on to explain that eligible voters can always register on the same day that they vote if they believe they were wrongly removed from the state’s voter rolls.
“And so there is the ultimate, ultimate safeguard in Virginia, no one is being precluded from voting, and therefore, I encourage every single citizen go vote,” Youngkin said.
