EPEC NEWS

The Trump administration’s Department of Justice filed a motion this week to withdraw from a lawsuit the Biden DOJ had filed against Virginia to stop it from conducting voter-list maintenance under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

(See the brief motion here.)

Courthouse News reported that U.S. District Court Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles, a Joe Biden appointee, said at a hearing on Friday, Jan. 31,  she would take the motion to dismiss under advisement.

During the 2024 election, while early voting was underway in Virginia, the Biden DOJ joined the League of Women Voters in a similar lawsuit against Virginia, claiming its voter-list maintenance program of removing ineligible registrations from the rolls violated the so-called 90-day “quiet period” of the NVRA.

Critics cried politics, pointing to the clear language in the law that allows for voter-roll errors to be corrected, such as ineligible people who were added to the rolls in error, and not subject to the “quiet period” that governs so-called systemic removals.

After a hearing in federal district court in Alexandria, Judge Giles sided with the Biden DOJ and ordered Virginia to return thousands of individuals who had self-declared as ineligible noncitizens to be returned to Virginia’s voter rolls.  Another federal court upheld Virginia’s appeal.

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares then filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, which granted a stay of Judge Giles’ order until the case had been fully adjudicated. It is unclear whether the civil cases will continue in the appeal process.

Activist groups that had filed suit against Virginia prior to the Biden DOJ following suit, vowed to continue.

At the time of the Supreme Court’s stay in October, Derek Lyons, president of election-law firm RITE, one of the groups that filed “Amicus” briefs supporting Virginia’s appeal, said:

“The people of Virginia have every right to insist that the number of non-citizens voting in their elections is zero.”

“The [Biden] federal government’s alliance with far-left activists to compel Virginia to expose its elections to non-citizen participation was an outrageous abuse of authority. Fortunately, the Supreme Court has put a halt to that effort, delivering today a victory for commonsense, public confidence, and election integrity.”

Democrats in the Virginia Assembly are also pushing bills, such as SB813,  that would prohibit Virginia’s Department of Elections from “systemic” voter-list maintenance for 90-days prior to a state election, similar to the NVRA statute which governs federal elections. The bills are widely viewed as doomed to Gov. Youngkin’s veto pen.

The Biden DOJ lawsuit, and appeals, hinged on an interpretation of the 90-day rule and whether routine removal of ineligible people, such as noncitizens and deceased voters, is considered “systemic.” The NVRA is clear that regular removal of ineligible voters is not prohibited by the 90-day rule.

See EPEC Team’s coverage here:

SCOTUS Stay a ‘Win for Election Fairness’