Supreme Court citizenship database ruling highlights important appeal to come

When the Supreme Court’s GOP-appointed majority on Friday granted the Trump administration’s emergency request to use a citizenship database ahead of the midterm elections, the court noted a limitation on the ruling: the National Voter Registration Act, or NVRA, which bars states from systematically purging voters 90 days before federal elections.

Likewise, in her dissent for the court’s three Democratic appointees, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the “bright side” of the ruling is its “minimal short-term impact,” because states can only conduct individualized voter roll maintenance ahead of November.

But in a footnote to Friday’s ruling that discussed the NVRA’s limitation on states ahead of federal elections, the majority recalled that the court will consider the scope of that provision in a case this coming term, Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota.

One of the issues in that case is whether the law bars states from implementing programs within 90 days of federal elections to cancel the voting registrations of noncitizens.

“The parties in this case do not ask us to address that question and have not briefed it, and we do not need to decide it here,” the court said in the footnote Friday in the database case, Department of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters.

So whatever impact the database ruling will have (or not have) for the midterms, it highlights that the broader issue isn’t going away in the months and years ahead.

RNC v. Mi Familia Vota is scheduled for oral argument in December, with a decision expected by July. The justices agreed to review the Republican-backed appeal in that case over opposition from Democrats and voting rights groups. It takes four of the nine justices to grant review of a petition, but the vote tally isn’t public. The justices are set to return to the bench on Oct. 5 to start their new term.

The 90-day rule is just one of two issues presented in the appeal. The other asks whether the NVRA or a federal consent decree prevent Arizona from making those registering to vote prove their citizenship when using a state form.

The RNC is challenging a federal appeals court ruling that raised concerns the Republicans’ desired restrictions would result in voter suppression.

The Trump administration is supporting the GOP at the high court.

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