In a 120-page opinion, District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly blocked the Trump administration from requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration and from ordering election officials to “assess” the citizenship of any person receiving public assistance before authorizing registration. She also prohibited the Election Assistance Commission from withholding federal funds from states that did not comply with the executive order.
“Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States—not the President—with the authority to regulate federal elections,” she wrote. “No statutory delegation of authority to the Executive Branch allows the President to undermine Congress’s deliberative process through executive order.”
After Trump issued an executive order last month “preserving and protecting the integrity of American elections,” three separate lawsuits were filed in federal court in Washington D.C. to challenge the policy, including suits brought by the Democratic National Committee (with New York Senator Charles Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries), the League of United Latin American Citizens, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
The judge concluded that Trump’s unilateral effort to reshape elections exceeds his own authority, noting that the Department of Justice “offered almost no defense whatsoever of the President’s order.”
If Trump wants to reform electoral processes, she wrote, Congress would be the appropriate body to do so, adding that Congress is “currently debating legislation that would affect many of the changes the President intends to order.”
For now, the judge allowed the Trump administration to implement two parts of the executive order related to the enforcement of preexisting laws:
One section orders the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department to make voter databases available to the Department of Government Efficiency to identify non-citizens registered to vote.
The second section directs the Department of Justice to take action against states that do not adopt Trump’s requirement that mail-in ballots be received by Election Day.
Source ABC News and CNN