Supreme Court can reverse a decision.

Virginia’s governor has been thrown out by federal judges who ordered the restoration of 1,600 names from voting rolls. Glenn Youngkin tried to purge the list of non-citizens the state believed to be ineligible.

The order was issued by a district court on Friday, and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld that ruling in a Sunday decision, leaving the state facing a Hail Mary effort to drag the Supreme Court into this fight.

The federal Justice Department and voting rights groups challenged the removals. They said they violated federal law, which prohibits large-scale changes in the voting roll within 90 days of a “quiet period” before an election.

Lawyers for Mr. Youngkin had claimed that the law only applied to real voters. They claimed that noncitizens were not eligible to vote and therefore, removing them from the voting rolls was not covered by law.

The court of appeals rejected this reading, saying Virginia had mixed up different parts of law.

The appeals court said that this is not the way courts interpret laws.

Virginia Republicans who were behind the purge said that the courts were knowingly placing some non-citizens on the rolls days before an upcoming election.

“Almost all of these individuals had presented immigration documents that confirmed their noncitizenship status. This fact was recently verified by federal officials,” Mr. Youngkin stated Friday.

Former President Donald Trump called attempts to restore names “blatantly anti-American” as well as “election interfering.”

The panel of three judges in the 4th Circuit ruled that Mr. Youngkin misstated the issue.

The judges stated that the state does not know enough about the noncitizens to be able to confirm with certainty the names they removed from their lists. The judges explained that restoring illegal voters is not the same as restoring them.

The appeals court upheld the majority of a preliminary order issued by District Judge Patricia Giles in Alexandria, federal courthouse.

Mr. Youngkin already indicated his willingness to bring the matter to the Supreme Court.

This case is part of a larger battle in which states are trying to purge their rolls of noncitizens.

In recent months, GOP-led state officials have released thousands of names of noncitizens that they purified. This is in accordance with Mr. Trump’s wishes and those of the national Republicans.

Democrats claim that the threat of voting by noncitizens is exaggerated and that the greater danger is to prevent valid voters from accessing the ballot box.

In Virginia, Mr. Youngkin in August ordered that election officials check their voter lists daily for those who were not eligible to vote, including non-citizens.

The Justice Department stated that names removed as a result of Mr. Youngkin’s order did not comply with the 90-day quiet period before elections — and were in fact sometimes incorrect.

The Justice Department stated in court documents that local election officials are removing legitimate voters. The feds reported that, as of Oct. 16th, Loudoun County removed 102 votes during the quiet period. However, three voters submitted an affirmation of their citizenship, and eight voters reregistered.

The courts are deciding whether or not Mr. Youngkin’s order was a systematic removal from the voting rolls.

The court ruled that Virginia had admitted that it was systematic in its actions, but disputed the idea that non-citizens could vote because the law did not apply to them.

The judges of the appeals court said this is a wrong interpretation of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, also known as Motor-Voter.

The appellate judge left the majority of Judge Giles’ order intact, but removed her requirement that Virginia provide training for election officials and pollworkers throughout the state in order to explain name removals and restorations.

The appeals court stated that the order is too vague and could cause “undue uncertainty.”

The court’s action does not affect the 6,303 names Virginia already removed from January 2022 until July 2024 or before the quiet period for federal elections.

Virginia claims it flags ineligible votes using the voter’s own records. This is usually done on a driver license application where a person must state their citizenship status.

In court documents, state lawyers stated that election officials made two attempts to contact the voter before erasing their name. The state said that these efforts show the purge wasn’t systematic and didn’t violate quiet period.

A lawyer for the groups that are challenging the state’s purge said that she met a Henrico County resident, a “lifelong voter” and Republican, who had been removed from the rolls by the purge. She said she received no notification.

She was turned away from the early voting in person this month because she had not checked the box for U.S. citizens on her latest driver’s licence application. She had to register again after being turned away.