WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court's conservative majority allowed Virginia to return to work Wednesday Purge voter registrations According to the state, this is what the state is aiming for Prevent people who are not US citizens from voting.

Due to the disagreements of the three liberal justices, the Supreme Court granted an emergency appeal from Virginia's Republican government under Governor Glenn Youngkin. The court did not provide any justification for its actions, which is typical in urgent complaints.

The justices responded to Virginia's appeal after a federal judge found that the state had illegally deleted more than 1,600 voter registrations in the last two months. A federal appeals court had previously allowed the judge's order to remain in effect.

Such voting is rare in American electionsbut the specter of illegal immigrants voting was an integral part of the political messages this year by former President Donald Trump and other Republicans.

Trump had criticized the earlier ruling, calling it a “completely unacceptable travesty” on social media. “Only US citizens should be allowed to vote,” Trump wrote.

The Justice Department and a coalition of private groups sued the state in early October, alleging that election officials in Virginia removed names from voter rolls under an order issued by Youngkin in August, violating federal election law.

The National Voter Registration Act requires one 90-day “quiet period” before the elections for the maintenance of electoral rolls so that legitimate voters are not removed from the rolls through bureaucratic errors or last-minute errors that cannot be quickly corrected.

Youngkin issued his order on August 7, the 90th day before the November 5 election. It required a daily review of state Department of Motor Vehicles data against voter rolls to identify people who are not U.S. citizens.

Protect Democracy, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit, cited media interviews with voters that showed the Youngkin administration's purge had removed U.S. citizens from the voter rolls.

One example is Nadra Wilson, who lives and tells the story in Lynchburg, Virginia NPR She was swept up in the purge. “I was born in Brooklyn, NY and I am a citizen,” Wilson said before showing her American passport as proof of her citizenship.

Project Democracy said in a statement: “This program removes eligible voters.” Virginia has not provided evidence that non-citizens voted in elections. Because there aren't any. And in fact, it is the voters in VA who are implicated in this election subversion plan.”

Voting advocates said people can still register to vote and cast provisional ballots during Virginia's early voting period or on Election Day.

U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles said election officials could still remove names on an individual basis, but not through a systematic purge.

Giles had ordered the state to notify affected voters and local registrars by Wednesday that registrations had been restored.

Youngkin said the Supreme Court's action was “a victory for common sense and electoral justice.”

“Clean voter rolls are an important part of a comprehensive approach we take to ensure the fairness of our elections,” he said in a written statement.

Nearly 6 million Virginians are eligible to vote.

A federal judge ruled in a similar lawsuit in Alabama this month ordered the state to restore voting rights to more than 3,200 voters who were deemed ineligible non-citizens. Testimony from state officials in the case showed that about 2,000 of the 3,251 voters who were inactivated were actually legally registered citizens.

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Associated Press writers Matthew Barakat in Alexandria, Virginia, Denise Lavoie in Richmond and Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report.