Supreme Court Sides With VA Governor, Affirms Removal of Non-Citizens From Voter Rolls

The Supreme Court of the United States affirmed on Wednesday that federal law grants Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) the power to remove non-citizens from his state’s voter rolls.

On Wednesday morning the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to issue a stay of the lower court rulings. The non-citizen names can be left off of the voter roll, and more can be removed through the same process.

Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagen, and Kenanji Brown-Jackson voted to deny the stay.

The news is a massive win for Republicans and Donald Trump, as well as a win for election integrity.

In accordance with a Virginia state law on the books since 2006, Youngkin removed 6,303 non-citizens from the voter rolls between when he took office in January 2022 and July 2024.

In August of this year, he issued an executive order directing Virginia election officials to continue the cleansing in the lead up to the November election.

According to the executive order, if someone applying for a driver’s license checks the box indicating they are not a U.S. citizen, but the person ends up on the voter roll -which almost certainly means they registered to vote- election officials are required to send the person a letter informing them that it is illegal for non-citizens to vote.

The person then has fourteen days from receiving the letter to show election officials proof of citizenship or their name will be removed from the voter roll.

The state of Virginia confirms that an additional 1,600 names have been removed since the executive order went into effect.

Not surprisingly, the Biden-Harris Administration sued Virginia to get the non-citizen names added back on the voter rolls.

The Department of Justice claimed in their suit that the act violated the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. The law states that you cannot remove names from the voter roll less than 90 days before election day.

Governor Youngkin and VA Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) countered by pointing out that the law does not allow the “systematic” removal of names from the voter roll, but that each of the 1,600 individuals were removed on a case-by-case basis because they had declared themselves non-citizens.

The case was sent before a liberal judge in U.S. District Court who sided with the Administration. Virginia appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth District -known as the most liberal court in the U.S.- and again the court sided with the Biden-Harris Administration, ordering the non-citizen names be added back to the voter roll.

Governor Youngkin then appealed his case to the Supreme Court, directing the appeal to Chief Justice John Roberts, who supervises the Fourth District.