A federal judge on Friday granted a Department of Justice request to block Virginia from systematically removing alleged non-citizens from the voter rolls this close to an election.
US District Judge Patricia Giles ordered the state to stop its program immediately and restore the voter registrations of more than 1,600 people who were removed in recent months within five days.
The decision comes 10 days before Election Day and as early votingwhich began in the state last month, is underway.
Virginia’s program “has curtailed the right of eligible voters to cast their ballots in the same manner as other eligible voters,” Giles said as she announced her ruling.
Ryan Snow, a lawyer for Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which represented civil rights groups who sued the state, called the ruling “a big victory.”
“All of the eligible voters who were wrongfully purged from the voter rolls will now be able to cast their ballots,” Snow said. “No one should mess with a citizen’s right to vote.”
Lawyers who had obtained the full list of people flagged to be purged from voter rolls said that 18 American citizens were incorrectly removed, a lawyer for the civil rights groups said in court on Thursday. The Justice Department said in a previous filing that 43 people removed from rolls in Prince William County were likely US citizens.
“How many more are there?” Judge Giles asked rhetorically on Friday.
Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin remained defiant in a statement reacting to the judge’s ruling=, saying “Virginia will immediately petition the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and, if necessary, the US Supreme Court, for an emergency stay of the injunction.”
Youngkin signed an executive order in early August that mandated voter roll purges of alleged non-citizens. Under the program, people are flagged for removal if they check a box on a Department of Motor Vehicles form indicating they are not a citizen or leave that section blank.
The groups that sued say the program is catching people who obtained driver licenses as green card holders and later became citizens, as well as others who simply filled out the form incorrectly.
States are barred from systematically removing people from voter rolls within 90 days of an election under the National Voter Registration Act. A lawyer for the Justice Department said in court Thursday that Virginia’s program might well be legal any other time of the year, but not during this so-called “quiet period” before an election.
A lawyer for the state of Virginia, Charles Cooper, defended the program in court Thursday, arguing, “There are going to be hundreds of non-citizens back on these rolls … Every time a non-citizen votes it cancels out a legal vote.”
Michael Kosnar and Gary Grumbach contributed.