The Supreme Court has been caught in the middle of a major election dispute between the Biden-Harris Justice Department and Virginia's Republican leadership.

The state's Republican governor Glenn Youngkin filed an emergency petition to remove self-declared non-citizens from the voter rolls. Youngkin wants the court to reverse an appeals court ruling that restored 1,600 residents to the rolls.

Supreme Court petitioned

U.S. Judge Patricia Giles on Friday had ruled against Youngkin, and the Fourth Circuit upheld her ruling. Youngkin says this is a dispute about election integrity, but the DOJ has accused him of systematically disenfranchising voters in violation of federal law.

The National Voter Registration Act (NRVA) bars states from purging voters 90 days before an election. The DOJ claims that Virginia violated the 90-day period.

But Virginia's attorney general, Jason S. Miyares, argued that the NVRA does not apply to non-citizens, who "never eligible to vote in the first place." Virginia argues that even if the NVRA applies to non-citizens, the removals are not systematic.

Under the "individualized" process, the Department of Motor Vehicles sends its list of self-declared non-citizens to local registrars. The registrar then contacts each non-citizen and gives them two weeks to complete a pre-printed form affirming their citizenship.

Of the 1,600 removed, "about 600 of these individuals personally informed Virginia’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) that they are not citizens, and about 1,000 presented noncitizen residency documents to DMV and were then positively identified as noncitizens through the United States’ own Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database," Virginia says.

Irreparable harm

Virginia also accuses the DOJ of hypocrisy, arguing he is enforcing a 2006 law signed by Democratic governor Tim Kaine that the DOJ "precleared" in the past.

Youngkin blasts the court's injunction as an affront to Virginia's sovereignty. He also says the court's block invites confusion and fraud, with early voting already well underway.

"Less than two weeks before the 2024 Presidential Election, and more than a month into early voting, the district court below ordered Applicants, Virginia and its election officials, to place over 1,600 self-identified noncitizens back onto Virginia’s voter rolls, in violation of Virginia law and common sense," Virginia argues

If the court's injunction is not overturned, the ruling will "irreparably injure Virginia’s sovereignty, confuse her voters, overload her election machinery and administrators, and likely lead noncitizens to think they are permitted to vote, a criminal offence that will cancel the franchise of eligible voters."

Trump will campaign in Virgnia on Saturday. The commonwealth has voted for Democrats in every presidential election since 2008, but polling shows Trump trailing Kamala Harris.