DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A federal judge ruled Sunday that Iowa can continue to challenge the validity of hundreds of potential non-citizen ballots, even though critics said the effort threatened voting rights people who have recently become U.S. citizens.

U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher, nominated by President Joe Biden, sided with the state in a trial filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in Des Moines, Iowa’s capital, on behalf of the Iowa League of Latino Citizens and four recently naturalized citizens. All 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 would prevent illegal non-citizen voting. Republican officials across the United States have made voting possible for non-citizen immigrants a key talking point in this election year even if it’s rare. Their goal came with former President Donald Trump falsely suggesting that his opponents are already committing fraud to prevent his return to the White House.

In his decision on Sunday, Locher highlighted a U.S. Supreme Court ruling four days earlier allowing Virginia to resume a similar purge of its voter rolls, even if it affected some American citizens. He also cited the Supreme Court’s recent refusal to review a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling on state election laws regarding provisional ballots. These Supreme Court decisions advise lower courts “to proceed with great caution before granting a last-minute injunction,” he wrote.

Locher also said the state’s efforts do not remove anyone from the voter rolls, but rather require some voters to use provisional ballots.

In a statement released Sunday, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, celebrated the decision.

“Today’s decision is a victory for election integrity,” Reynolds said. “In Iowa, while encouraging all citizens to vote, we will enforce the law and ensure that those votes are not nullified by the illegal vote of a non-citizen.”

An ACLU spokesperson said the organization had no immediate comment.

After Locher had a hearing in the ACLU lawsuit Friday, Secretary of State Paul Pate and state Attorney General Brenna Bird issued a statement saying Iowa had about 250 registered noncitizens on voter lists, but that the Biden administration has not provided data on them.

Pate told reporters last month that his office was forced to rely on a list of potential noncitizens from the Iowa Department of Transportation. It names people who registered to vote or voted after identifying themselves as noncitizens living legally in the United States when they previously sought to obtain a driver’s license.

“Today’s legal victory is a guarantee for all Iowans that their votes will count and will not be overturned by illegal votes,” Bird said in the statement released after Sunday’s ruling.

But ACLU lawyers said Iowa officials recognized that most of the people on the list were eligible to vote and should not have been included. They said the state was violating the voting rights of naturalized citizens by falsely challenging their registrations and investigating them if they voted.

Skull issued its directive On October 22, just two weeks before the November 5 election, ACLU lawyers argued that federal law prohibits such a move so close to Election Day.

“It is very clear that the Secretary of State understands that this list is composed primarily or entirely of American citizens who have exactly the same fundamental right to vote as the rest of us voting citizens of Iowa,” Rita Bettis Austen, legal director of the ACLU. of Iowa, said during a Zoom briefing for reporters after the hearing.

Individuals on the state’s list of potential non-citizens may have become naturalized citizens after their filings with the Department of Transportation.

Pate’s office asked county elections officials to challenge their ballots and ask them to vote provisionally. That would leave the decision of whether they will be counted to local officials after further review, with voters having seven days to provide proof of their U.S. citizenship.

In his ruling, Locher wrote that Pate had backed away from some of his initial hard-line positions at a previous hearing. Pate’s lawyer said the secretary of state no longer aims to require local election officials to challenge the votes of every person on his list or to force voters on the list to cast provisional ballots even if they have proven their citizenship at a polling place.

Federal and state law already prohibit non-citizen voting, and the first question on Iowa’s voter registration form asks whether a person is a U.S. citizen. The form also requires potential voters to sign a statement affirming that they are citizens, warning them that if they lie, they may be convicted of a crime punishable by up to five years in prison.

Locher’s decision also came after a federal judge had stopped a similar program in Alabama challenged by civil rights groups and the U.S. Department of Justice. Testimony from state officials in the case showed that about 2,000 of the more than 3,200 voters rendered inactive were actually legally registered citizens.

In Iowa’s case, registered noncitizens potentially represent only a tiny fraction of the state’s 2.2 million registered voters.

But Locher wrote that it seems indisputable that a portion of the names on Pate’s list are registered voters who are not U.S. citizens. Even if that share is small, an injunction would effectively force local elections officials to let ineligible voters vote, he added.

Democrats and Republicans are committed to a sprawling legal battle for months in this year’s elections. Republicans have filed dozens of lawsuits challenging various aspects of the vote after being repeatedly chastised by judges in 2020 for filing complaints about how the election was conducted only after the votes were counted. Democrats have their own team of dozens of people fighting GOP business.

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Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas, and Goldberg from Minneapolis.