A federal judge in Virginia on Friday ordered Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin to restore 1,600 voters to the rolls after his office removed them in August, claiming they were not American citizens.
U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles granted the injunction request after the Justice Department sued Youngkin on Oct. 11, alleging that the removals violated the National Voter Registration Act’s 90-day “Quiet Period” before the general election.
The law prohibits any systematic changes to voter rolls so close to the election since there isn’t enough time to remedy conflicts that could arise.
The Justice Department’s lawsuit was combined with a lawsuit brought by the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights, the League of Women Voters of Virginia, the League of Women Voters of Virginia Education Fund and African Communities Together.
They argued the governor’s purge removed many eligible citizens over simple errors made on forms — and some of those errors, plaintiffs said, were because agencies like the Department of Motor Vehicles simply incorrectly labeled them as noncitizens on forms.
Those plaintiffs also argued the purge effort had discriminated against people based on race or national origin. Giles, however, did not issue a decision on whether Youngkin’s program was discriminatory.
All 1,600 voters who were removed from the rolls must now be notified by Virginia officials within five days so they can get themselves reinstated by Election Day.
Youngkin issued the executive order in August, with exactly 90 days to go until the Nov. 5 election. It instructed the DMV to pore over voter rolls and compare records to find noncitizens.
Giles’ decision indicates that removing noncitizens from voting rolls is permitted, but that the process must be undertaken on a case-by-case basis, not in a sweeping removal where there was no individualized check on a person’s citizenship status.
In a statement, Youngkin vowed to appeal the ruling and take the matter all the way to the Supreme Court “if necessary.”
On his social media platform Truth Social, Trump responded to the news Friday by misstating the facts of the judge’s ruling. He claimed the judge ruled that noncitizens were eligible to vote; she did not. He also reiterated unsupported claims that the Justice Department is “weaponized” against him.
“This is 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,” Trump said.
Meanwhile, Simone Leeper, legal counsel for the Campaign Legal Center celebrated the ruling.
“By enforcing the federal law in place to protect voters from last-minute purges, the district court has affirmed what we know to be true: every American citizen, regardless of where they were born, has the freedom to vote. Virginia’s systematic, faulty purge, which targeted new Americans for removal from the voter rolls, violated that fundamental principle. We are excited that the court has ensured the 1,600+ voters who were unlawfully purged will now be able to make their voices heard in this election,” she said.
Judith Browne Dianis, executive director of the Advancement Project, another organization that represented the plaintiffs, called Youngkin’s attempted purge a “desperate” effort to “undermine the will of the people.”
The attempt to sow distrust in Virginia’s election was foiled, she added.
“In an effort to feed false anti-immigrant tropes, citizens, disproportionately voters of color, have been wrongly removed from the voter rolls, and they must be restored,” Dianis said.