The RNC has now sued eight states over laws letting citizens who never set foot there vote based on a parent's old address, and a North Carolina court just handed Republicans their first win.
Republicans are done treating this as a fringe issue. Since last year the Republican National Committee has filed eight lawsuits, most recently against New Jersey on July 9 and Nevada on July 8, arguing that state after state has quietly rewritten what it means to be a resident. The laws in question let a U.S. citizen who was born overseas and has never lived in America register to vote using the last address of a parent or grandparent who once lived in the state. Republicans call these voters what the litigation calls them: never residents. They say the arrangement is not just generous, it is unconstitutional.
New Jersey's law lets overseas citizens register and vote based on a relative's last known New Jersey address, even though the state constitution requires 30 days of actual residency before an election. The RNC, the New Jersey Republican Party and GOP congressional candidate Michael McGuire filed suit in Mercer County Superior Court asking a judge to strike the provision, purge never-resident registrations from the rolls, and block their ballots from being counted going forward. RNC Chairman Joe Gruters put it bluntly: "Democrats are allowing certain people who have never lived in New Jersey to vote in the state's elections. The RNC is taking them to court to stop this unconstitutional scheme, protect lawful voters, and secure New Jersey elections."
The RNC is not arguing from theory alone anymore. On May 9, Special Superior Court Judge Hoyt Tessener ruled for Republicans in a case out of Wake County, finding that North Carolina's State Board of Elections had violated the state constitution by registering never residents. Tessener wrote that the issue had "been addressed by our State's appellate courts, and no genuine disputed material facts exist," granting summary judgment to the RNC and North Carolina GOP without a trial. That ruling followed a 2025 appeals court decision that had already sided with Republicans on the same question. It gives the party's newer suits, filed in states with similar constitutional residency language, a precedent to point to rather than an untested theory.
Nevada is the clearest parallel. The RNC, the Nevada Republican Party and Jim Marchant, the party's nominee for secretary of state, sued Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar in Carson City, arguing the state's constitution requires voters to have actually resided in Nevada, not inherited residency from a parent who once lived there. Aguilar rejected the framing outright. "The lawsuit challenging Nevada's protections for certain overseas voters is an attack on the voting rights of eligible U.S. citizens living abroad, and military families whose lives are shaped by service and sacrifice," he said in a statement responding to the suit.
Six states, one argument, no settlements yet
The RNC has now filed the same core claim in Nevada, Colorado, Nebraska, Virginia, Arizona, North Carolina, Michigan and New Jersey. None of the pending states have moved to settle. Nebraska's case, filed June 24 in Lancaster County District Court by the RNC alongside two Nebraska voters, Jack Riggins and Pamela Dingman, challenges a 2010 state law that the RNC says lets citizens who have never lived in Nebraska vote there simply because a parent or guardian once did. The RNC has been careful to draw a line in every filing: none of the suits target military service members or genuine former residents living overseas, both of whom remain covered under federal law protecting military and overseas voters. The target is narrower, citizens with no residency history in the state at all, voting on the strength of a relative's old mailing address.
Virginia's suit, filed against the state's elections registrar, includes voter registration forms in which applicants stated plainly, "I am a U.S. citizen living outside the country, I have never lived in the United States." Republicans argue that admission alone should have disqualified the registration under the Virginia Constitution. Democratic officials in Nevada and elsewhere have called the campaign an attack on expat and military families, while Republicans counter that residency cannot be inherited any more than a driver's license can be passed down at death.
Every one of the remaining seven suits is still working through state courts, and the North Carolina win gives Republicans their first real test case to cite. If Nevada, New Jersey or Nebraska produce rulings that track Judge Tessener's reasoning, expect the RNC to keep filing in whichever states still have similar laws on the books before the next federal election cycle.
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