Virginia argued that a lower court misinterpreted a federal voting law.
The U.S. Supreme Court voted 6–3 on Oct. 30 to allow Virginia officials to remove suspected noncitizens from the voter rolls.
State officials reportedly removed the names of 1,600 individuals believed not to be U.S. citizens from Virginia voter rolls in recent weeks.
The court did not provide reasons for its emergency order, but Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, indicating they would not have granted the order. The application in the case known as Beals v. Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights was filed with the court on Oct. 28.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit found unanimously on Oct. 27 that taking the names off the voter rolls within 90 days of an approaching federal election violated the National Voter Registration Act.
Federal elections are scheduled for Nov. 5.
The Supreme Court previously held in Purcell v. Gonzalez (2006) that courts should not change rules close to an election because doing so creates a risk of causing confusion.
Virginia countered that the legal provision is not relevant because the names being removed are not those of actual U.S. voters.
But “that argument violates basic principles of statutory construction by focusing on a differently worded statutory provision that is not at issue here and proposing a strained reading of the Quiet Period Provision to avoid rendering that other provision absurd or unconstitutional,” the Fourth Circuit said.
Virginia had not demonstrated its appeal was likely to succeed or that it would suffer irreparable harm should the appeal be denied, the circuit court said as it affirmed an Oct. 25 ruling by U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles.
Giles wrote that Virginia was still free to cancel the voter registration of noncitizens individually or to investigate “noncitizens who register to vote or who vote in Virginia’s election.” The ruling applies only to Virginia’s “systematic” effort to remove noncitizens that began after Aug. 7, she said.
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