Kentucky, Mississippi, and Nebraska back RNC proof of citizenship petition at Supreme Court

A group of state officials is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to empower states to verify the U.S. citizenship of voters in what is expected to be a consequential election integrity case.

The secretaries of state for Kentucky, Mississippi, and Nebraska filed an amicus brief last week, The Federalist reported, in support of the Republican National Committee’s (RNC’s) petition to uphold Arizona laws requiring documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote and mandating the removal of noncitizens from voter rolls.

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At issue is the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which the Supreme Court has previously held does not allow states to require proof of citizenship when registering to vote using the federal voter registration form. However, the high court’s ruling did not bar states from requiring proof of citizenship when registering to vote using state-created forms and did not bar the review of voter rolls and removal of noncitizens.

In the brief, the secretaries argue that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit was wrong to hold that the NVRA preempts state laws requiring proof of citizenship.

“If the NVRA preempts States from imposing and enforcing a citizen qualification to vote in their elections, it creates serious constitutional doubt about the constitutionality of the NVRA itself,” they wrote.

“The Ninth Circuit was wrong in this case. States determine voter qualifications and perform voter list maintenance. Nothing in the National Voter Registration Act changed this longstanding tenet of federalism,” Nebraska Secretary of State Robert Evnen, R, told The Federalist.

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Holding that the NVRA prevents states from enforcing federally mandated voter eligibility requirements would further “obliterate” states’ constitutional right to administer and manage elections, the secretaries argued.

“The Constitution is clear: states determine who is eligible to vote in American elections and that power can never be taken away,” Secretary of State Michael Watson, R-Miss., told The Federalist.

“With its ruling, the Ninth Circuit is trying to strip states of our traditional power over voter eligibility and hand it to Washington,” Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, R, added. “The Supreme Court should reverse the Ninth Circuit and affirm a power the states have held for 250 years.”

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Arizona Democrats filed a lawsuit in 2021 to block a pair of Arizona laws requiring proof of citizenship when registering to vote and mandating removal of confirmed noncitizens from voter rolls.

The Ninth Circuit sided with the Democrats, arguing that a 2018 consent decree signed by state officials barred enforcing the laws and that the NVRA would also preempt enforcing those laws even if the consent decree were not in place.

The Kentucky, Mississippi, and Nebraska secretaries of state argued that the Constitution’s elections clause “does not empower Congress to preempt voter qualifications enacted under States’ Qualifications Clause and Seventeenth Amendment authority,” questioning the “constitutional validity of the NVRA itself” if it can be used to preempt states’ constitutional responsibility to uphold the Constitution itself.