As is often the case in emergency situations, the Supreme Court’s brief order did not explain the majority’s reasoning. The three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — signaled their dissent and said they would have denied Youngkin’s request to allow the voter purge.

Ryan Snow, an attorney for one of the groups challenging the purge, said the Supreme Court order ignores federal law that prohibits removing registered voters “on the eve of an election.”

The decision “is a blow to the many eligible Virginian voters who were illegally purged and will now face uncertainty about their ability to cast a vote that will be counted,” said Snow, who is an attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. he said in a statement.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday morning in Petersburg, Virginia, Youngkin said he was “very pleased” with the court’s decision, which he said provides “further comfort throughout the state that this election will be secure, it will be accurate , will reflect the will of the voters.”

Youngkin bristled at the suggestion that voters have been “cut off” from voter rolls, noting that eligible Virginia voters can still vote using the same-day registration process even if they are removed from voter rolls. . Such voters sign an affirmation of eligibility in person and then cast a provisional ballot, which is counted after election officials confirm their eligibility.

With less than a week until Election Day and the presidential race between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris considered essentially tied, the Supreme Court is increasingly embroiled in election-related disputes. Legal battles over voting rules are percolating primarily in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada, and judges are likely to be dragged into additional litigation in the coming days.

Already this week, judges rejected a request by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to remove his name from presidential ballots in Wisconsin and Michigan after he abandoned his independent campaign and endorsed Trump.

In the Virginia case, challengers sued state officials, saying they were making changes too close to the election and, in their efforts to weed out noncitizens, eliminating eligible voters based on driver’s license application forms that could be incorrect or outdated. Fully qualified voters who omitted or glossed over the citizenship question on those forms have been caught up in the purge, as have those who became citizens years after their first interaction with the Department of Motor Vehicles, challengers said.

“Everyone agrees that states can and should remove ineligible voters, including noncitizens, from their voter rolls. The only question in this case is when and how they can do it,” Attorney General Elizabeth B. Prelogar, representing the Biden administration, told the justices in court papers.

Across the country, Republicans have backed ballot measures in eight states to specify that only U.S. citizens can participate in elections, even though noncitizen voting is already restricted in all state and federal elections. Noncitizens are allowed to vote in school or municipal elections in 19 communities, including Washington, D.C.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles ruled against Youngkin, saying that a federal law known as the National Voter Registration Act prohibits states from purging their voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election. . Giles paused the program until the day after the Nov. 5 election and ordered the state to send letters to the 1,600 people removed from the rolls, order registrars to reinstate those people and publicize that the recall process had stopped. .

On Sunday, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the decision, and Virginia asked the Supreme Court to intervene. Wednesday’s Supreme Court order puts Giles’ decision on hold while the litigation continues. The case could eventually return to the high court, but not before the election.

The total number of affected voters is unlikely to influence the presidential race in Virginia, where Harris has a six-point lead among likely voters, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll conducted last week.