Right-Wing Group Asks SCOTUS to Turn Pro-Voting Law Into Tool for Voter Purges

The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a right-wing group with a long track record of pushing for voter roll purges, is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reinterpret a federal law designed to expand voting access as a mandate for aggressive voter removals.

In a petition filed Tuesday, PILF urged the justices to take up its lawsuit against Michigan after lower courts, including the Sixth Circuit, sided with the state. PILF has been demanding that the state hand over voter registration records so the group can assess whether it’s doing enough to maintain accurate voter rolls.

At the heart of the case is the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) — known as the “Motor Voter” law — which was passed in 1993 to increase voter registration opportunities and participation. To secure GOP support and pass the legislation, lawmakers added a section requiring states to make “reasonable” efforts to maintain accurate rolls.

PILF now is arguing to the court that “reasonable” demands far more aggressive removals than states already do. And it argues that the NVRA’s public disclosure provisions empowers the group to sue for voter data when states decline to hand it over.

“With the NVRA, Congress intended to increase and enhance registration and voting by ‘eligible citizens,’ protect the integrity of the electoral process, and ensure that accurate and current voter registration rolls are maintained,” PILF argued in their petition. “Congress intended maintenance of state voter rolls to be transparent because oversight and accountability safeguard the right to vote.”

PILF cast the lower courts’ rulings as a fundamental misreading of the law.

“The underlying decision discounted the weighty responsibility Congress gave states to maintain accurate voter rolls while also raising an insurmountable hurdle for those seeking redress for the denial of public records,” the group concluded. “This case is the ideal vehicle for this Court to provide much needed guidance and clarification.”

The petition also makes clear that PILF wants the court to expand who can sue under the NVRA. In their view, simply being denied access to records should be enough to drag states into court. 

“If the Foundation does not have standing to compel disclosure of records in this case, then the transparency Congress intended is unattainable,” they added. “This case poses questions of exceptional importance: how do courts evaluate whether voter list maintenance is reasonable and who has standing in a public records disclosure case?”

PILF is pressing a parallel case out of Pennsylvania, where it is asking the court to declare that denial of voter roll records automatically gives groups like PILF standing to sue states. In that petition, filed days earlier, PILF framed the NVRA’s transparency provision as a broad “right to know” standard and argued that courts erred by requiring them to show any harm beyond a records denial.

Testifying at a July congressional hearing, PILF founder Christian Adams made a similar case, arguing that the way that federal courts are interpreting the NVRA’s list maintenance requirements “isn’t what Congress intended.”

He urged lawmakers to tighten that part of the law to make their intention clear. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger also has said Congress must “modernize” the NVRA by making to easier to purge voters.

Now, PILF’s two petitions adopt a different tactic — asking SCOTUS to change the way courts interpret the law — to reach the same goal: expanding the NVRA’s list maintenance provisions beyond how courts have read them, and supercharging private enforcement.

The NVRA was a pro-voter law, requiring states to offer registration at DMVs and public assistance agencies. If the Supreme Court embraces PILF’s view, it could allow anti-voting groups to both demand sensitive records and force states to purge voters, using a law originally intended to expand the franchise — not shrink it.