The Supreme Court allows Virginia to remove suspected non-citizens from the voter rolls

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A divided Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed Virginia to implement a program that state officials said was aimed at purging suspected noncitizens from its voter rolls, siding with Republicans in one of its first major decisions related to next week's election .

The decision, issued without comment by the majority of conservative justices, will allow the state to keep certain voters it deems non-citizens off the rolls.

Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, called the effort in Virginia a common-sense way to ensure non-citizens don't vote. But the Biden administration, voting rights groups and lower courts said Virginia's program also entrapped — and potentially disenfranchised — an unknown number of citizens.

While Virginia is not a battleground state, both the program and the litigation took on sharp political overtones as Trump and other Republicans have pushed false narratives about widespread voting by non-citizens. At issue are about 1,600 voter registrations that Virginia said came from self-identified non-citizens but who a U.S. district court said had not been fully verified for citizenship status.

Non-citizens are not allowed to take part in federal elections; None of the lower courts' rulings changed this.

Trump and other Republicans have seized on claims of illegal voting and it was part of the argument they used to explain the former president's loss in 2020. However, documented cases of non-citizens voting are extremely rare. A recent audit of Georgia's 8.2 million residents found that there were only 20 registered non-citizens – only nine of whom had voted.

The Virginia case began with an order signed in August by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, calling on election officials to take more aggressive steps to register residents who self-identify as non-citizens with the Department of Motor Vehicles identified, compared with the electoral rolls and cleaned up these matches.

Youngkin called the Supreme Court's order on Wednesday a “victory for common sense and electoral justice.”

The state's voters, he said, “can cast their ballot on Election Day knowing that Virginia's elections are fair, secure and free from politically motivated interference.”

The Biden administration and voting rights groups filed a lawsuit, and a U.S. district court concluded last week that at least some eligible U.S. citizens had their registrations under the program revoked. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles said that none of the parties involved in the case knew for sure the citizenship status of the purged voters because the information was not verified.

Opponents of the program relied on a 1993 law, the National Voter Registration Act, which prohibits states from making “systematic” changes to voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election. The Biden administration said Youngkin's order created just such a systematic program within the so-called “quiet period” required by federal law.

Virginia argued that the quiet period bans applied only to eligible voters and not to non-citizens.

None of the lower court's decisions prevented the state from conducting individual eligibility assessments or permanently removing noncitizen voters from the voter rolls, nor did they grant noncitizens the right to vote in federal elections. Federal law only prohibits “systematic” changes.

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals – all appointed by Democratic presidents – upheld most of Giles' rulings, paused the show and ordered the state to reinstate the 1,600 registrants.

In their emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, Virginia election officials relied in part on a still-developing legal theory that warns federal courts against making last-minute changes to the status quo of election rules before an election. The so-called “Purcell Principle” is intended to prevent federal courts from being drawn into last-minute election controversies.

Virginia argued that the federal district court violated that principle by pausing the program. Voting rights groups countered that there is a federal law at play in this case that expressly allows plaintiffs to challenge last-minute voting changes.

Lawyers for Virginia also raised the possibility of same-day registration. Those whose registrations were wrongfully canceled were able to re-register at an in-person polling station by confirming their citizenship.

Virginia's opponents countered that this option would not solve the problem for purged voters who plan to vote by mail without knowing that their registrations had been canceled and that it would cause confusion at polling places – especially if poll workers were not adequately aware of this Be prepared for this scenario.

Since the Supreme Court provided no reasoning for its decision, it is not clear which Virginia arguments were persuasive.

This story has been updated with additional details.

CNN's Tierney Sneed contributed to this report.