Secretary of State Wes Allen will implement a "different, as yet undesigned, process" for non-citizen voter removals in 2025, according to a court filing on Monday.
U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco blocked a state program to remove ineligible voters from its election rolls from continuing in October.
After a hearing in October in federal court in Birmingham, Manasco preliminarily enjoined Allen's program to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from voter registration lists.
The Department of Justice alleged the program began too close to the November 5 general election, violating the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.
Allen announced on August 13 that his office was implementing a process of removing ineligible non-citizen voters from Alabama's rolls ahead of the November elections. Allen said he was instructing Boards of Registrars in all 67 Alabama counties to initiate steps necessary to remove everyone who is not an American citizen from the voter rolls.
Both sides requested Manasco to pause the lawsuit on Monday.
"Additionally, the State Defendants represent that the 2024 process at issue in this litigation has not been restarted. Instead, the Secretary's office intends to implement a different, as yet undesigned, process in 2025. It is reasonably likely that, in designing the new process, the Secretary's office will consider which data sources to rely upon and the currency of data, among other things. Changes that the Secretary's office implements may impact the viability of some or all of Private Plaintiffs' claims. It makes sense to avoid discovery about a process which is subject to forthcoming change. It may well be possible to end this matter, in part or in full, through mootness or otherwise, in a manner that achieves the Secretary's goals without resource consumption that litigation brings, and it makes sense to take time to adequately consider that possibility," Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and other attorneys in the case wrote in a filing on Monday. "Finally, counsel for the State Defendants are scheduled to be in trial in February in the Singleton, Milligan, and Caster Congressional redistricting cases pending before this Court. That trial may reasonably be expected to be three weeks long and is time intensive. Given this, the State Defendants would like to see any discovery in this case before March be extremely limited."
Motion to Stay by Caleb Taylor on Scribd
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