SCOTUS Warms Up For Election By Allowing Illegal Purge Of Virginia Voters
But don't you dare criticize them for abusing the shadow docket!
The Supreme Court is cracking its knuckles in preparation to do something absolutely batshit next week. This morning, the six conservative justices allowed the state of Virginia to purge voters in blatant violation of the National Voter Registration Act’s 90-day quiet period. On the shadow docket, natch.
The NVRA specifically instructs states to “complete, not later than 90 days prior to the date of a primary or general election for Federal office, any program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.” (52 USC § 20507(c)(2)(A)). On August 7, exactly 90 days before the election, Virginia Governor Glen Youngkin signed an executive order instructing the Commissioner of the Department of Elections to remove any voter who refused to attest to citizenship with the DMV when applying to vote.
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The reason the NVRA bans such systemic removals on the eve of the election is because it always sweeps in lots of voters who are in fact US citizens — either because they have become citizens since they got their drivers licenses, or because they submitted proof when registering to vote which they simply did not have to hand in when applying for a drivers license, or because they checked the wrong box. That’s why both the government and a coalition of immigrants’ rights groups sued, and it’s why the trial court and the Fourth Circuit agreed that the law should be stayed and the affected voters restored to eligibility. Indeed, the respondents brief by the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights noted that multiple citizens had been affected by this purge and had their legal registrations canceled.
But the Supreme Court did not care. It let the Virginia purge go into effect, and may well do the same for a similar purge in Alabama, which was blocked by Trump appointee Judge Anna Manasco. The Supreme Court’s six conservatives could not send a clearer message that they are a bunch of red-pilled goons, mainlining Fox News’s constant repetition of the lie that hordes of non-citizens are risking arrest and deportation to do something a third of Americans can’t even be bothered to get off the couch for.
The ruling is flagrantly at odds with Justice Kavanaugh’s pet Purcell doctrine, invented to allow red states to continue using illegal congressional maps because it might confuse voters on the eve of an election to vote in fair districts. Purcell’s application has been somewhat capricious, with the Supreme Court’s conservatives insisting that four months before the primary was far too late to undo an illegal racial gerrymander, but three months is just fine for a rule that affects voter registration in Arizona. But those decisions look almost rational compared to this morning’s ruling allowing Virginia to purge voters during a period in which Congress has specifically disallowed it.
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And, as ATL’s own Joe Patrice points out, Virginia had the temerity to argue in its application for stay that “The district court based the injunction, which mandates a variety of disruptive measures in addition to forcing noncitizens back on the ballot, on a provision of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) that does not even apply to the removal of noncitizens and other voter registrations that are void ab initio.” The VRA’s 90-day provision applies to voter rolls, not “forcing non-citizens back on the ballot.”
These assholes are about to do something that makes Bush v. Gore and Trump v. US look like reasoned, non-partisan exercises of justice. And then they’ll have the temerity to whine about being criticized for it!
Beals v. Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights [SCOTUS docket]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
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