Republicans, Trump DOJ press Supreme Court to weaken federal protection against last-minute voter purges

The Republican National Committee (RNC) and Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court Friday to severely weaken a federal safeguard meant to prevent voter purges right before elections. Each argue that states should be allowed to carry out mass citizenship-based purges during the National Voter Registration Act’s 90-day “quiet period.”

But the briefs filed in the major Arizona voting case also exposed an unusual fracture. 

Arizona’s Democratic attorney general defended the state’s documentary proof of citizenship requirement while rejecting the RNC’s attempt to sidestep a federal court order blocking it.

The filings mark the opening round of merits briefing in Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota, a case that could reshape both how states police their voter rolls and how difficult they can make it for eligible citizens to register to vote.

Four briefs landed Friday: one from the RNC, one from President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ), one from Republican leaders of the Arizona Legislature and one from Arizona and Attorney General Kris Mayes (D). 

The Supreme Court granted the RNC’s petition in June and is expected to hear the case during its upcoming term. The voting rights groups defending the lower court’s ruling have until Oct. 13 to file their briefs.

At the center of the case are two Arizona laws enacted by Republicans in 2022.

House Bill 2492 requires people using Arizona’s state voter registration form to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship. A separate law, House Bill 2243, requires election officials to repeatedly check government databases for information indicating that registered voters may not be citizens and cancel their registrations under certain circumstances. The latter program can continue during the 90 days immediately before a federal election.

That 90-day window is where the case could have consequences far beyond Arizona.

The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) requires states to finish any program designed to systematically remove ineligible voters from the rolls at least 90 days before a federal election. 

Congress created the safeguard to prevent large-scale removals close to Election Day, when eligible voters wrongly caught in a purge may have little time to learn what happened and restore their registrations.

The law does not freeze voter rolls completely. 

Election officials can still make certain removals, including when a voter dies, requests removal or becomes disqualified for reasons explicitly recognized by federal law. But broad, systematic removal programs are generally supposed to stop before the 90-day deadline.

Republicans seek to open the door for last-minute purges

The RNC and Trump administration are now asking the Supreme Court to create a major limitation on that protection for citizenship-based removals.

Their argument is not simply that Arizona’s program is individualized rather than systematic. They contend that people believed to be noncitizens do not qualify as “ineligible voters” under the NVRA at all because, in their view, that phrase protects only people who were once legally eligible to register and later became ineligible.

“The NVRA consistently uses the term ‘voter’ to refer only to individuals who either are, or once were, eligible to vote in federal elections,” the RNC wrote. “Noncitizens do not qualify.”

DOJ makes essentially the same argument, which would allow states to conduct systematic citizenship-based removal programs even inside the 90-day window if the Supreme Court accepts it.

“A noncitizen is an ineligible applicant, because a noncitizen is not eligible to register or vote in the first place,” DOJ wrote. “For that reason, a noncitizen cannot become a ‘registrant’ and, in turn, cannot become an ‘ineligible voter’ for purposes of Section 8.”

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that theory last year. 

It held that Arizona’s database-driven citizenship checks constituted the kind of systematic removal program covered by the NVRA’s quiet period.

The distinction matters because citizenship databases can contain outdated or incomplete information about eligible voters, particularly naturalized citizens. A database may accurately show that someone was once a noncitizen without reflecting that the person later became a U.S. citizen.

Recent attempts to purge alleged noncitizens show how quickly eligible voters can get swept in. In Alabama in 2024, state officials flagged 3,251 registered voters based on records indicating they had once been issued noncitizen identification numbers. The state later acknowledged that thousands of those flagged voters were U.S. citizens, and a federal judge blocked the program before Election Day after finding that it violated the NVRA’s 90-day deadline.

Those errors become particularly dangerous close to an election. 

Voters wrongly removed months beforehand may have time to fix their records. Voters removed days before Election Day may not even discover the problem until they try to cast a ballot.

The surprising fracture

Friday’s briefs also opened a second front in the case — and produced a striking disagreement among the parties defending Arizona’s citizenship rules.

Mayes, a Democrat, joined the Republican-led state Legislature and the Trump administration in arguing that the Ninth Circuit went too far when it held that federal law prevents Arizona from requiring documentary proof of citizenship from people who use the state-created voter registration form.

That position puts Arizona’s Democratic attorney general in the unusual posture of defending a Republican-enacted voting restriction challenged by voting rights organizations.

The dispute traces back to a 2013 Supreme Court ruling, Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona. The Court held that Arizona could not require people using the federal voter registration form to submit additional documentary proof of citizenship because the NVRA requires states to “accept and use” that federal form. 

But the ruling also said states retained flexibility to create their own registration forms and require information not included on the federal form. 

A 2018 federal consent decree — a binding court order entered after the parties settled litigation — further required Arizona officials to treat state and federal form applicants similarly when they lacked documentary proof. Under that agreement, officials checked motor vehicle records and, if they could not confirm either citizenship or noncitizenship, registered the person as a “federal-only” voter who could participate in federal races.

Arizona’s Republican Legislature directly challenged that system in 2022 by requiring officials to reject state forms without documentary proof of citizenship.

The RNC and Republican legislative leaders now argue that the old consent decree cannot prevent the Legislature from changing state law. The legislative leaders’ brief goes so far as to argue that a prior secretary of state could not bind future lawmakers through a litigation settlement.

But Mayes breaks with them there.

Her office told the Supreme Court that while Arizona may have strong grounds to ask a judge to modify or eliminate the 2018 decree because state law has changed, state officials cannot simply treat the federal court order as if it no longer exists.

“This holding is correct, at least for now,” Arizona and Mayes wrote of the Ninth Circuit’s decision enforcing the decree. “The consent decree is a binding injunction, and parties to the decree (and affected non-parties when appropriate) may seek to vacate or modify it given the subsequent change in Arizona’s law.”

That procedural split makes Arizona’s position more complicated than a simple alliance with the RNC. 

Mayes is asking the justices to recognize more state authority to demand citizenship documents, while simultaneously defending the principle that government officials must obey an existing federal court judgment until a court changes it.

The two questions could also produce very different kinds of rulings. 

The consent decree dispute is rooted in Arizona’s unusual legal history. But the RNC and DOJ’s interpretation of the NVRA would apply nationwide.

If the Supreme Court accepts their reading, states could have substantially more freedom to run systematic purge program in the final weeks before federal elections — precisely when an erroneous government database match can be hardest for an eligible voter to correct.

The voting rights groups defending the Ninth Circuit ruling will get the next word. Their merits briefs are due in October, with the RNC’s reply due in November under the current briefing schedule. 

The Supreme Court is expected to hear oral argument later in the term.