The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed Virginia to remove some 1,600 names of suspected noncitizens from its voter rolls ahead of next week’s election.

The justices issued a temporary stay of lower court decisions that had ordered the state to restore the names to the lists, ruling that the purge violated federal law.

The court divided 6-3, with the three Democrat-appointed justices dissenting.

The temporary stay is a major victory for Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who had ordered election officials to do more to scour their rolls for noncitizens who have ended up registered to vote in violation of the law.

“Clean voter rolls are one important part of a comprehensive approach we are taking to ensure the fairness of our elections,” the Republican governor said after the ruling. “Virginians can cast their ballots on Election Day knowing that Virginia’s elections are fair, secure and free from politically motivated interference.”

But the Alliance for Justice, a liberal advocacy group, accused the justices of “voter suppression,” and said it was a worrying development ahead of what’s expected to be a tsunami of election-related cases.

---

SEE ALSO: Noncitizens are on the voter rolls — nobody knows how many

---

“We deserve free and fair elections where voters who are qualified and registered to vote should be able to cast their ballot without any obstacles. The Supreme Court appears to disagree,” said Keith Thirion, AFJ’s co-president.

Left-leaning voting rights and immigrant rights groups and the federal Justice Department had challenged Mr. Youngkin, saying the purge violated a 1993 federal law that forbids any large-scale culling of voters’ names within 90 days of a national election.

Virginia had argued that the law, the National Voter Registration Act or Motor Voter, didn’t apply to the removal of ineligible voters such as noncitizens.

A federal district judge and then the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that reasoning, saying it bungled the proper understanding of the law.

The justices didn’t divulge their reasons for issuing the stay and it’s not clear whether they disagreed with the lower courts on the 1993 law or whether they believed restoring the names at this point was too much of a disruption this close to Tuesday’s elections.

Mr. Youngkin in August issued an executive order announcing that the state had removed more than 6,000 names of noncitizens over the previous 30 months. He also ordered local election officials to do a daily scouring to remove ineligible voters in the run-up to the election.

Virginia said it relied on Department of Homeland Security records to flag more than 1,000 of the names. The others were flagged because they identified themselves as noncitizens at some point on state applications such as a driver’s license.

Those whose names were removed were sent notices giving them a chance to prove their eligibility.

Voting rights groups that challenged Mr. Youngkin said they are aware of at least a few noncitizens whose names were purged and they suspect many more.

The case is Susan Beals v. Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights. Ms. Beals is Virginia’s elections commissioner.

Virginia is one of a series of GOP-led states that have announced major steps to remove noncitizens from voter rolls.

Texas, Ohio, Florida and Alabama announced major purges totaling thousands of suspected noncitizens. Meanwhile, Georgia said it scoured its lists and found just 20 noncitizens.

Then there are states such as California, where election officials say they don’t see a reason to attempt any purge.

The issue has gained particular salience amid the Biden border surge, though experts say the noncitizens who end up on voter rolls are usually not unauthorized migrants but rather legal immigrants.

Experts spar over how extensive a problem it is, with some saying it’s exceedingly rare and others arguing that the true number can’t be known until states such as California do more to scour their rolls looking for names.