Republican efforts to block certain North Carolina voters from participating in this year’s election have been blocked, for now, by federal and state courts.

The North Carolina Republican Party and the Republican National Committee hoped to require approximately 225,000 registered voters to be removed from the state rolls or at least to cast provisional ballots. A decision this week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit further diminished the chances of their search being successful.

The case began in state court, but the North Carolina State Board of Elections and the Democratic National Committee were able to take the matter to federal court.

Trump-appointed federal district court judge Richard Myers II had rejected one of the GOP’s claims but remanded the remaining constitutional claim to the state court for further consideration. The Fourth Circuit rejected that decision and remanded to Myers.

NCGOP and the RNC argued in their original complaint filed in late August that the state election board violated federal law and the state constitution by not removing 225,000 voters who registered with an incorrect form.

The outdated form requested, but did not require, the registrant to provide their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number (information required under federal law). The state board of elections has since updated the registration forms.

Regarding those registrations, the election board ruled that voters could not be removed from the rolls so close to this year’s election, as prohibited by federal law. Under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, there is a 90-day “quiet period” before the election during which voters may not be removed from the rolls.

Additionally, voters must provide such identification information when requesting an absentee ballot, for example, and must provide acceptable forms of photo identification when voting by mail or in person, the elections board said.

GOP plaintiffs also alleged that the state election board violated the North Carolina Constitution’s equal rights protections by failing to remove 225,000 registered voters or requiring them to vote by provisional ballot this year.

Meanwhile, a North Carolina appeals court panel rejected a claim Republican cause Targeting absentee ballots submitted by eligible voters abroad who has never lived in a state.

The lawsuit is part of a legal strategy developed by the RNC and deployed in other battleground states.