U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher, an appointee of President Joe Biden, sided with the state in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in the Iowa capital of Des Moines on behalf of the League of Latin American Citizens of Iowa and four recently naturalized citizens. The four were on the state’s list of questionable registrations to be challenged by local elections officials.
The state’s Republican attorney general and secretary of state argued that investigating and potentially removing 2,000 names from the list would prevent illegal voting by noncitizens.
In his ruling Sunday, Locher pointed to a U.S. Supreme Court decision four days prior that allowed Virginia to resume a similar purge of its voter registration rolls even though it was impacting some U.S. citizens. He also cited the Supreme Court's recent refusal to review a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision on state electoral laws surrounding provisional ballots. Those Supreme Court decisions advise lower courts to “act with great caution before awarding last-minute injunctive relief,” he wrote.
Locher also said the state's effort does not remove anyone from the voter rolls, but rather requires some voters to use provisional ballots.
In a statement on Sunday, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, celebrated the ruling.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for election integrity," Reynolds said. "In Iowa, while we encourage all citizens to vote, we will enforce the law and ensure those votes aren’t cancelled out by the illegal vote of a non-citizen.”
