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A divided Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed Virginia to implement a program that state officials say aims to purge suspected noncitizens from voter registration, siding with Republicans in one of the first major decisions related to next week’s elections.

The decision, issued without comment from a majority of conservative justices, will allow the state to ban from the rolls certain voters it suspects are not citizens.

Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have framed the efforts in Virginia as a common-sense way to keep noncitizens from voting. But the Biden administration, voting rights groups and lower courts said Virginia’s program also ensnared — and potentially disenfranchised — an unknown number of citizens.

Although Virginia is not a battleground state, both the program and the legal battle have taken on sharp political overtones as Trump and other Republicans have fueled false narratives about widespread voting by noncitizens. At issue are about 1,600 voter registrations that Virginia says came from self-identified noncitizens, but who a U.S. court ruled had not yet been fully vetted for their citizenship.

Non-citizens are not allowed to vote in federal elections; no lower court ruling had changed that fact.

Trump and other Republicans have seized on claims of illegal voting as part of the argument they made to explain the former president’s 2020 loss. But documented cases of non-citizen voting are extremely rare. A recent audit in Georgia of the 8.2 million people on the rolls found only 20 registered non-citizens – only nine of whom had voted.

The Virginia case began with an order signed in August by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, requiring election officials to take more aggressive steps to identify residents who identified themselves as noncitizens to the Department of Motor Vehicles , to match against voter lists and to purify the voter lists. those matches.

Youngkin on Wednesday called the Supreme Court’s order a “victory for the common sense and fairness of elections.”

The state’s voters, he said, “can cast their votes on Election Day knowing that Virginia’s elections are fair, secure and free of politically motivated interference.”

The Biden administration and voting rights groups sued, and a U.S. court concluded last week that at least some eligible U.S. citizens had their registrations deleted under the program. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles said none of the parties involved in the case knew for certain the citizenship status of the purged voters because the information had not been verified.

Those opposed to the program relied on a 1993 law, the National Voter Registration Act, that prohibits states from making “systematic” changes to voting rolls within 90 days of a federal election. The Biden administration said Youngkin’s order created exactly that kind of systematic program within the so-called “quiet period” mandated by federal law.

Virginia argued that the bans during the silent period only applied to eligible voters, not non-citizens.

None of the lower courts’ orders barred the state from conducting individual eligibility assessments, or from ultimately removing noncitizen voters from the rolls, nor gave noncitizens the right to vote in federal elections. Federal law only prohibits “systematic” changes.

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — all appointed by Democratic presidents — upheld most of Giles’ ruling, paused the program and required the state to reinstate the 1,600 registrants. to stand.

In their emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, Virginia election officials relied in part on a still-developing legal theory that cautions federal courts against changing the status quo of voting rules at the last minute before an election. The so-called “Purcell Principle” is intended to prevent federal courts from getting involved in last-minute election controversies.

Virginia argued that the federal district court violated this principle by pausing the program. Voting rights groups countered that a federal law was at play in this case that specifically allowed plaintiffs to challenge last-minute voting changes.

Virginia attorneys also pointed out the possibility of same-day registration. Those whose registration was wrongly canceled could re-register at an in-person polling station by confirming their citizenship.

Virginia opponents countered that that option would not solve the problem for purged voters who planned to vote absentee, unaware that their registration had been canceled and that it risked confusion at polling places — especially if poll workers were not adequately prepared to deal with the scenario to deal with.

Because the Supreme Court did not provide an explanation for its decision, it is not clear which of Virginia’s arguments were persuasive.

This story has been updated with additional details.

CNN’s Tierney Sneed contributed to this report.