Supreme Court Allows Virginia to Purge 1,600 Voters From Registration Rolls

The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed Virginia to purge about 1,600 people from its voter rolls, handing a temporary victory to Republican officials in the state who said the move was necessary to prevent noncitizens from voting.

The decision was provisional as the case moves forward, though it will apply to the election next week.

The order, which did not include a vote count, gave no reasoning and was unsigned, as is typical in cases decided on the emergency docket. But it noted that Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied the state’s request to continue the voter purge.

Virginia asked the court to intervene after lower courts halted the program, saying that federal law banned states from removing voters so close to an election.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Republican of Virginia, welcomed the Supreme Court’s ruling, heralding it as “a victory for commonsense and election fairness.”

Voting rights groups like the Campaign Legal Center expressed dismay, saying it would “wrongfully remove qualified voters” in the lead-up to the election.

The Justice Department, which joined with civil groups to challenge the program, added that it had sought to “ensure that every eligible American citizen can vote in our elections.”

The case is among a handful of election-related disputes to reach the Supreme Court in the final days before Nov. 5. On Tuesday, the justices batted away a bid by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who dropped his independent campaign for the White House in August, to remove his name from the ballots in two crucial battleground states, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Virginia is not a swing state, but the case underscores a baseless theory that has animated former President Donald J. Trump and his allies, who have cast voting by undocumented immigrants as a threat in an effort to stoke doubt about the outcome.

In early August, Mr. Youngkin, a Republican, signed an executive order to hasten the removal of suspected noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls. Mr. Youngkin, in instating the program, insisted that only noncitizens would be affected, though anecdotes illustrate that registered voters have themselves been mistakenly removed from the rolls.

Voters flagged as potentially ineligible are typically notified by mail and given two weeks to confirm their citizenship. Those voters can cast a ballot using the state’s same-day registration system. After signing an affirmation of eligibility, they may cast a provisional ballot that can be counted after elections officials confirm their eligibility.

It is illegal for noncitizens to cast a vote, and studies also have found that instances in which it happens are extremely rare.

The Justice Department and civil rights groups had pushed back against the plan, concerned that it would ultimately remove eligible voters during a hotly contested presidential election. They pointed to a federal law, the National Voter Registration Act, that restricts such purges in the period immediately before a federal election.

A federal trial court judge sided with the Justice Department and advocacy groups, ordering the state to reinstate the roughly 1,600 voters that it had removed from the rolls. The state, the judge added, should stop “continuing any systematic program intended to remove the names of ineligible voters” until the election. A federal appeals court agreed.

Virginia appealed to the Supreme Court this week, asking it to temporarily reinstate the program.