US District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Monday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from carrying out a plan that the administration says would prevent noncitizens from voting. Critics argue the plan risks stripping eligible voters of their ballots and infringes on states’ authority over elections.
The order bars the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security from sending states lists of registered voters whom the administration says may not be citizens. It also prevents them from asking state election officials to set aside those voters’ ballots or refuse to count them until citizenship is proven. The decision is the latest legal setback for President Donald Trump’s effort to expand federal control over how elections are run, ahead of the November 3 midterms, when Trump’s fellow Republicans are fighting to keep their majorities in both houses of Congress.
Court rulings split on administration’s voter citizenship push
The administration did win a separate round on Monday. A panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in San Francisco, allowed the government to threaten state and local election officials with prosecution if they do not comply with its demands over alleged noncitizen voting. Chutkan is not bound by that ruling.
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Noncitizen voting is already illegal, and according to the available evidence, it is exceedingly rare. Still, Trump, who falsely asserts that his loss in the 2020 presidential election was caused by fraud, has long accused states of facilitating noncitizen voting. States are responsible for administering elections.
Letters to California and Washington draw legal challenges
Over the past month, the administration escalated its pressure on election officials by sending letters to officials in California and Washington state. The letters demanded that they not count ballots from people on lists the administration said may not be citizens. Voting rights and privacy advocates then asked Chutkan to temporarily stop the administration from sending such lists and making such demands. They argued the administration was violating the Privacy Act of 1974, which limits the federal government’s ability to disclose sensitive personal information.
In a court filing on Saturday, the Justice Department said its letters were part of an effort to enforce a federal law banning noncitizen voting. It argued they did not amount to a separate policy that a federal court could review. Earlier this week, a federal judge in Los Angeles rejected the department’s request to order California to temporarily set aside mailed ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters whom it said were likely not citizens.
Chutkan, a appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama based in Washington, DC, said the administration’s data may not be reliable. That raised the risk that lawfully registered voters would be disenfranchised. On Friday, an appeals court also rejected the department’s request for an emergency order pending appeal. The same day, a federal judge in San Francisco ordered the Justice Department to stop threatening to prosecute state and local election officials who do not comply with the administration’s demands over alleged noncitizen voting.
