Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares announced that the state filed an emergency application with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the Court to remove noncitizens from its voter rolls.
“Last night, Virginia filed an emergency stay in the US Supreme Court,” Miyares wrote on social media. “American citizens — and no one else — should determine American elections.”
Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) said of the emergency filing: “It’s commonsense: noncitizens shouldn’t be on our voter rolls. Thank you @JasonMiyaresVA for filing immediately with the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency appeal of the order for Virginia to put over 1,500 people who self-identified as non-citizens back on the voter rolls.”
The move follows a ruling from the Fourth Circuit of Appeals stating that removing names from the state’s voter rolls within 90 days of an election violates the National Voter Registration Act.
Virginia argued that the provision in the National Voter Registration Act does not apply to noncitizens.
The Fourth Circuit, however, said the argument “violates basic principles of statutory construction by focusing on a differently worded statutory provision that is not at issue here and proposing a strained reading of the Quiet Period Provision to avoid rendering that other provision absurd or unconstitutional.”
Former President Donald Trump called the ruling a “totally unacceptable travesty, and Governor Youngkin is absolutely right to appeal this ILLEGAL ORDER, and the U.S. Supreme Court will hopefully fix it!”
