Virginia officials move to throw out immigrant rights case

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (CN) — Virginia election officials on Friday asked a federal judge to toss a civil rights lawsuit claiming that a state directive improperly purged naturalized immigrants from voting rolls.

That comes after the U.S. Department of Justice under newly elected President Donald Trump voluntarily dropped out of the case earlier this week. It’s carried forward by a coalition including the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights, the League of Women Voters of Virginia and African Communities Together.

Amid a change of the guard in Washington, the suits pits increased immigration enforcement and state’s rights against the civil rights of newly minted American citizens.

The disputed state policy — ordered by Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin in August — could hinder work with naturalized immigrants, lawyers for the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights argued during a two-hour hearing on Friday.

“Voting access is a central issue,” said Simone Leeper, an attorney with the Campaign Legal Center who is representing the group.

State lawyers say the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights lacks legal standing because the group cannot prove the state policy frustrates their core mission.

“It [the policy] did nothing remotely like that,” said Charles Cooper, an attorney representing the state.

U.S. District Court Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles, a Joe Biden appointee, said at the hearing Friday that she would take the issue under advisement.

The controversy began in August with Executive Order 35. That state policy booted 1,600 voters from the rolls.

Virginia officials pitched the change as a matter of ballot security. “We verify the legal presence and identity of voters using [Department of Motor Vehicle] data and other trusted data sources to update our voter rolls daily,” Youngkin said in a statement at the time.

Alongside the Biden administration’s Department of Justice, immigrant and voting rights groups sued in October as the election loomed. They argued the directive violated federal laws including the National Voter Registration Act, which mandates a 90-day quiet period before elections.

They also contended that by design, the policy “identifies and classifies based on national origin without considering naturalized citizenship status.” They said it also referred removed voters for criminal prosecution. Giles previously ruled that the state had indeed illegally purged voting rolls during the 90-day quiet period, but the Supreme Court later reversed that decision, granting an emergency request from Virginia.