The Supreme Court's recent stay supports Governor Youngkin’s initiative to keep noncitizens off Virginia’s voter rolls, reflecting a major triumph for Republican-supported election integrity efforts.
Breitbart reported that the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a decisive ruling that continues to shape the debate over voter registration and the rights of noncitizens in the state. The High Court’s decision to uphold Governor Glenn Youngkin's executive order to remove noncitizen names from the Virginia voter rolls marks a pivotal moment in the ongoing scrutiny of voter list accuracy and electoral integrity.
Governor Youngkin has been proactive in addressing the integrity of Virginia's voter rolls since taking office. From January 2022 to July 2024, under his administration, a total of 6,303 noncitizens were scrubbed from the voter lists, aligning with a state law established in 2006 that strictly regulates the eligibility of voters by their citizenship status.
In August 2024, Youngkin signed an executive order to intensify efforts to verify the citizenship of registered voters before the November elections. This order specifically targeted individuals who had previously indicated noncitizenship on driver's license applications but had later registered to vote.
Under the terms of this executive order, these individuals were required to verify their citizenship within 14 days or face removal from the voter rolls.
Following this directive, an additional 1,600 persons were expeditiously removed from Virginia's voter registration lists, further cementing the Governor's commitment to maintaining stringent voter roll accuracy.
The removal of these noncitizens swiftly attracted federal attention and legal challenges. The Biden-Harris Department of Justice intervened, filing a lawsuit against Governor Youngkin.
They argued that his actions violated the National Voter Registration Act, specifically its requirement of a "quiet period" of 90 days before elections during which no systematic purges of voter rolls are permitted.
However, Virginia countered this argument by stating that the removals were individualized actions rather than a broad, systematic purge, thus not breaching federal regulations.
Despite these defenses, both a federal trial judge and the Fourth Circuit Court initially ruled against Youngkin, mandating the reinstatement of the 1,600 recently removed individuals — a decision that stood only briefly before reaching the Supreme Court.
The decision from the U.S. Supreme Court to issue a stay overruled the lower courts, thereby preventing the reinstatement of the 1,600 individuals criticized as unlawfully purged. The 6-3 vote reflected a clear division along ideological lines, with conservative justices favoring the stay and liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Kentanji Brown Jackson dissenting.
This Court's decision underscored a significant endorsement of Governor Youngkin's strict measures to enforce election laws, particularly those related to citizenship and voter eligibility.
The case, entitled Beals v. Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights, case number 24A407, is poised to set a substantial precedent for how voter roll audits and removals are conducted across the United States, particularly in how they align with federal election law.
Ambassador Ken Blackwell, a staunch supporter of election integrity measures, lauded the Supreme Court's ruling.
“This is a spectacular victory for election integrity and the rule of law,” he stated. "Americans overwhelmingly support the federal law that forbids noncitizens from voting in federal elections, and I applaud both the Supreme Court for upholding the law here and Governor Youngkin for cleaning up Virginia’s voter rolls.”
With this ruling, the precedent is set that could influence future legal challenges and policies regarding voter registration and the integrity of electoral rolls in Virginia and beyond.