The Supreme Court will consider the legality of a massive voter purge in the final weeks before the election as part of a larger case in which the justices are considering the methods used by Arizona to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls.
The dispute won’t be resolved until the midterm elections, but it bolsters Republican efforts to tighten voting rules amid President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread election fraud.
The justices will examine the scope of the National Voter Registration Act, a 1993 law that regulates how states maintain their voter rolls. While much of the case concerns Arizona’s specific procedures for verifying voters’ citizenship status, the dispute also raises questions with national implications about when election officials can purge the rolls.
The NVRA prohibits the “systematic” voter removal program for 90 days after an election. In the past, lower courts have applied this prohibition to programs aimed at en masse deregistering noncitizens.
Now Republicans and the Trump administration argue that the so-called NVRA quiet period does not apply to purges aimed at removing noncitizens from the rolls.
The ruling in the case comes after the Supreme Court delivered a major victory for Republicans this term with a ruling that made it more difficult to use the Voting Rights Act to challenge redistricting plans. On Monday, the justices struck down another case that Republicans had asked to hear, demanding more details on a petition asking to renew Pennsylvania’s requirement that voters put data on mail-in ballot envelopes. The case, if ultimately decided, would give a higher court the opportunity to further limit the ability of lower courts to strike down restrictive voting laws.
Next term, the Supreme Court will more fully examine Arizona’s 2022 law, having already considered it once on its emergency docket. The justices will specifically look at a provision in the law that prohibits them from registering using an Arizona registration form.
The Supreme Court previously allowed the requirement to go into effect until the 2024 election, but the high court upheld an appeals court decision striking down the proof of citizenship requirement for mail-in voting.
Old legal precedents have established that Arizona voters without proof of citizenship can register to vote using a federal voter registration form, but those federally-only voters cannot vote in state or local elections.
A review of Arizona’s voter purge program could radically change how voter rolls are maintained across the country, as the Trump administration and some Republicans argue states are not doing enough to keep their voter rolls clean.
Currently, states can only remove voters from the rolls one at a time until 90 days before an election, if the voter requests to be removed or if there is an “individualized” investigation into their eligibility.
However, Arizona and other states are pushing to be able to implement data matching programs during those 90 days using federal citizenship data programs or state citizen databases. However, these programs can sometimes mislabel citizens as ineligible voters, leading to concerns that allowing mass purges so close to an election does not give voters or states time to correct erroneous exclusions.
Supporters of Arizona’s and similar laws say the restrictions are common sense rules that keep voter rolls clean and prevent noncitizens from voting. Critics say the laws risk disenfranchising voters—one study found that 9% of Americans do not have easy access to citizenship documents, such as passports, that meet the laws’ requirements. They argue that because instances of noncitizens voting are so rare, the meager problem does not justify the obstacles the requirements could create to access to the ballot.
Trump has made proof of citizenship requirements a central issue of his administration. But his efforts in Congress and through executive order to expand that requirement nationwide have failed.
Several states have recently passed their own proof of citizenship laws and are still in the early stages of implementing this requirement. Arizona, however, stands out for its much longer history of having different versions of the requirements.
In the dispute before the Supreme Court, the plaintiffs argue that a long-standing consent decree, resulting from a challenge to an older law adding this requirement, deprives the state of the right to require proof of citizenship for federally-only registered voters who register using a state registration form.