Supreme Court could greenlight voter purges right before Election Day

The U.S. Supreme Court’s announcement Monday that it will hear a case on two Arizona voting laws could spell danger for a key federal protection that prevents voters from being removed from the rolls right before an election.

At issue in the case, in part, is whether states can systematically cancel registrations of alleged noncitizens during the National Voter Registration Act’s (NVRA) 90-day “quiet period” before federal elections.

That “quiet period” is a provision in the landmark pro-voting law that was intended  to bar states from conducting mass voter removals in the final stretch before Election Day, when eligible voters may not have enough time to discover and challenge an improper removal.

If SCOTUS rules for Arizona, it could give President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) a major opening to do exactly what it has already been testing in courts recently: identify voters it claims may be ineligible, hand those names to states and argue that officials can remove them one by one — even right before an election. It also would weaken a key provision of the NVRA, a strikingly successful federal voting law that for three decades has helped make voter registration more accessible, especially for marginalized communities.

The Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case turns what had been a looming threat into a direct test of whether the NVRA’s quiet period protection still has teeth.

“This case is not about election security. It is about political power, who gets to participate in our democracy, and who Republicans are trying to push out of it,” Mi Familia Vota President and CEO Hector Sanchez Barba said earlier this month, after the Trump administration urged the Supreme Court to take the case. “The Trump administration and MAGA Republicans are advancing one of the most aggressive voter suppression campaigns in modern history under the false pretense of combating noncitizen voting, a problem that study after study has shown is exceedingly rare.”

Sanchez Barba warned that if the Supreme Court sides with Republicans, the decision “could open the door for states across the country to carry out last-minute voter purges, weaponize flawed citizenship databases, and strip eligible Americans of their fundamental right to vote just weeks or even days before an election.”

The fight against last-minute disenfranchisement is now before the justices

The Arizona case began as a challenge to two restrictive voting laws enacted in 2022. One law imposed new documentary proof of citizenship requirements on voters. The other required county officials to cancel registrations if they received information that a voter wasn’t qualified or had “reason to believe” a voter wasn’t a U.S. citizen.

Voting rights groups sued, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately blocked key provisions of the laws. Among other things, the appeals court held that the NVRA’s quiet period applies to Arizona’s citizenship-based cancellation program.

Republicans are now asking the Supreme Court to reverse that ruling.

One of the questions before the justices is whether Arizona’s citizenship-based cancellation process counts as the kind of systematic removal program the NVRA bars within 90 days of a federal election — or whether the state can treat those removals as individualized efforts to remove alleged noncitizens from the rolls.

If the court sides with the Republican National Committee and other GOP parties defending the Arizona laws, it could give states far more room to run citizenship-based voter purge programs shortly before federal elections.

The timing matters because citizenship-based purge efforts often depend on sweeping database checks — not individualized investigations.

When those mistakes happen days before an election, eligible voters may be unable to fix them before the polls close.

That’s the danger the NVRA’s quiet period is supposed to guard against. 

“We have already seen the consequences of these reckless policies,” Sanchez Barba added. “Eligible citizens have been wrongly flagged, removed from voter rolls, and forced to navigate impossible bureaucratic hurdles to restore their rights. That’s not election integrity, that’s disenfranchisement.”

It doesn’t stop states from removing voters who have died, moved, been disqualified under state law or requested to be removed. But it does generally bar states from conducting systematic programs to remove voters in the 90 days before a federal election.

The Trump administration is trying to narrow that protection.

DOJ has already previewed the workaround

In Georgia, DOJ has argued that the quiet period does not stop a state from removing voters during the 90-day window if the removals are framed as “individualized” and based on information provided by the federal government.

That argument arose in DOJ’s lawsuit seeking Georgia’s unredacted statewide voter registration list, part of the Trump administration’s broader push to obtain sensitive voter data from every states.

Voting rights advocates and election officials have warned that the demands exceed DOJ’s authority, threaten voter privacy and could fuel improper purges of eligible voters. 

The department’s theory in Georgia is that the NVRA bars states from conducting systematic voter removal programs close to an election, but it doesn’t prevent the federal government from conducting its own systematic review and then sending states lists of voters to investigate and remove individually.

In practice, that could turn the quiet period into a loophole.

Federal officials, or potentially outside groups, could do the list-building work first. States could then process those names one by one and argue that each removal was individualized, even if the broader effort began as a systematic sweep.

That is the same line the Ninth Circuit explicitly rejected.

In the Arizona case, the appeals court held that cancellation programs based on database checks are systematic, not individualized. The court emphasized that the NVRA applies to “any program” that systematically removes ineligible voters from the rolls during the quiet period.

Now the Supreme Court will decide whether that reading stands.

The ruling could shape DOJ’s national voter roll campaign

The stakes of the case go well beyond Arizona.

Trump’s DOJ has sought access to voter registration data across the country, saying it needs the information to examine whether states are properly maintaining their rolls. In some cases, the department has urged courts to expedite appeals so it can review state voter files for potential noncitizens before the election.

So far, no court has embraced DOJ’s theory that it’s entitled to state voter rolls. The department has lost 10 lower court cases and its first appeal over access to state voter registration records.

But if the Supreme Court weakens the quiet period, DOJ could have a stronger hand in pressuring states to act on federal referrals during the final months before Election Day.

That would mark a major shift in how the NVRA operates.

Instead of serving as a firm protection against last-minute systematic purges, the quiet period could become a more technical rule that states and federal officials can work around by dividing a broader purge effort into a series of individual cases.

The case also comes as Republicans have made strict proof of citizenship requirements and noncitizen voting claims central to their anti-voting agenda.

Arizona’s proof of citizenship law resembles the SAVE America Act, Trump’s top elections priority, which would impose documentary proof of citizenship requirements nationwide. DOJ originally opposed Arizona’s laws, but after Trump returned to office, the department switched sides and filed a brief backing Republicans at the Supreme Court.

For voting rights advocates, the concern is not only that the court could revive Arizona’s laws. It is that the ruling could bless a broader strategy for purging voters close to elections — one that DOJ has already begun pressing in other courts — and weaken a crucial federal voting law.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear oral argument this fall and issue a decision next spring.