The Commonwealth of Virginia asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Sunday to allow state election officials to remove roughly 1,600 “self-identified” noncitizens from the voter rolls before Election Day.
“Americans citizens — and no one else — should determine American elections,” Attorney General Jason Miyares wrote in a Monday statement announcing the development.
The emergency application for stay asks the nation’s highest court to effectively pause a Sunday decision by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling upheld a Friday decision by a Biden-appointed district court judge that prohibits the state from removing noncitizens and other ineligible voters from its voter registration lists ahead of the 2024 election.
The three-judge panel for the 4th Circuit was comprised of all Democrat appointees, according to local media and the Associated Press.
The entire legal saga began in August, when Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order directing commonwealth agencies to undertake voter list maintenance and other election security procedures ahead of the November election. In the order, the governor revealed the state had removed 6,303 noncitizens from Virginia’s voter rolls from January 2022 to July 2024.
The Biden-Harris Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the commonwealth earlier this month, alleging that the state’s removal of noncitizens and other ineligible individuals from Virginia’s voter rolls this close to the November election violated provisions of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). That law requires states to complete “not later than 90 days prior to the date of
