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A federal judge has blocked key elements of an Executive Order that tightened requirements for voter registration.
President Trump signed Executive Order 14248 in March of last year, with the aim of preventing illegal immigrants from voting.
The Order direct the Electoral Assistance Commission to require documentary proof of US citizenship, such as a US passport, in its national mail voter-registration form.
The Order also directed federal officials to take other steps to ensure illegal immigrants and non-citizens do not vote in federal elections.
Parts of the Order had already been blocked on a preliminary basis by other judges before the latest ruling, by District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.
Kollar-Kotelly ruled that provisions for citizenship verification “are inconsistent with the constitutional separation of powers and cannot lawfully be implemented.”
She said the US Constitution “does not allow the President to impose unilateral changes to federal election procedures,” adding that the framers of the Constitution gave power over election rules “to the parts of our government that they believed would be most responsive to the will of the people: first to the States, and then, in some instances, to Congress.”
She also rejected the Order’s attempts at pre-screening voter eligibility, ruling that eligibility should only be assessed through attestation under penalty of perjury.
The Epoch Times reports, “The preliminary ruling applies to three separate lawsuits brought by plaintiffs League of United Latin American Citizens, League of Women Voters Education Fund, and the Democratic Party.
“The ruling leaves several of the challenges brought by plaintiffs unresolved for the time being. The judge directed the parties to develop a schedule for looking at the remaining challenges.”
Judge Kollar-Kotelly has issued several high-profile rulings against President Trump during both of his terms.
In 2017, she issued the first preliminary injunction against President Trump’s military “transgender ban,” arguing that it likely violated the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.
At the end of 2025, she barred the Department of Justice from bringing certain kinds of evidence against former FBI Director James Comey as it sought new charges against him.
