Virginia Is Illegally Rejecting Student Voter Registrations, Lawsuit Alleges

The NAACP’s Virginia chapter filed a lawsuit Friday alleging state election officials are unlawfully rejecting college students’ voter registration applications and same-day registration provisional ballots based on missing address information – such as dorm name or room number – that students aren’t required to include. 

Virginia election officials have rejected “innumerable” applications from college students in violation of the Materiality Provision of the Civil Rights Act and the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, according to the complaint. 

The statewide Virginia NAACP brought the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, on behalf of its members attending Hampton University, Norfolk State University, Virginia State University, George Mason University, James Madison University, Old Dominion University, University of Richmond, and Virginia Commonwealth University. 

The Virginia voter registration application does not request or require students to include a dorm name or room number, and the Virginia Administrative Code prohibits the state from denying registration for failure to submit a mailing address, the plaintiffs argued. 

Regardless, local election officials across the state are rejecting student registrations on those grounds, the complaint argued, citing examples in Richmond, Norfolk, Fairfax County and more. 

The complaint pointed to state election officials who have defended the policy, including Susan Beals, Virginia Commissioner of Elections, who told lawmakers at a Virginia House committee meeting in August that college students’ registration applications were rejected because, “It is critical that we have their address, their mail box number. We can’t just have the road address of a building.”

In Fairfax County, election officials sent a voter registration application rejection email to a George Mason University student saying students “must” provide a dormitory name, dormitory street address and dorm room number, according to the complaint. 

The city of Richmond rejected “numerous” voter registration applications on similar grounds in September and October 2025, the plaintiffs noted.

The Virginia NAACP is asking the court to order the defendants to stop rejecting applications based on the missing address information.

Cleta Mitchell, an ally of President Donald Trump and a leader of the right-wing effort to restrict voting, spoke to Republicans in 2023 about the need to make it harder for college students to vote in specific battle-ground states, including Virginia.