Judge Blocks Trump’s Citizenship Voting Rules

A federal judge on Friday blocked key provisions of President Trump's executive order that requires proof of US citizenship for voter registration.

Signed on March 25, Executive Order 14248 directs the Election Assistance Commission to require in its national mail voter registration form that voters provide documentary proof of US citizenship, such as a passport. The order also directs federal officials to take measures to prevent illegal immigrants and other noncitizens from voting in federal elections.

The commission, established by Congress in 2002, helps local officials administer elections.

On Friday, 82-year-old US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly (Clinton) - who was previously presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court - ruled that provisions requiring citizenship verification "are inconsistent with the constitutional separation of powers and cannot lawfully be implemented."

Kollar-Kotelly said that the US Constitution "does not allow the President to impose unilateral changes to federal election procedures," insisting that the framers 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."

"They assigned no role at all to the President," she added.

She also struck down part of the executive order directing heads of various federal agencies to "assess citizenship" before giving the federal form to "enrollees of public assistance programs," adding that the National Voter Registration Act requires agencies to give said form to those receiving their services.

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.

About the judge

Judge Kollar-Kotelly is an unabashed left-wing and anti 2A activist. Her father worked in US foreign assistance programs in Mexico, Ecuador and Venezuela in the 1950s. In 2004, she issued a FISA court order allowing the NSA to continue spying on domestic metadata. In 2009 she issued a ruling blocking visitors to national parks from carrying concealed weapons, and in 2016 she denied a preliminary injunction against Washington DC's ban on concealed carry permits. In 2017, she blocked the enforcement of Trump's ban on transgenders in the military.

In 2024, Kollar-Kotelly sentenced a woman to 57 months in prison and three years of supervised released under the FACE Act for blocking access to an abortion clinic, and sentenced another woman (Paula Harlow) to two years in federal prison and 36 months of supervised release for the same thing. She also found a J6 protester, Dominic Box, guilty on six charges. Box was pardoned by Trump before he could be sentenced.

Kollar-Kotelly notably criticized Trump over blanket pardons for those involved in the January 6th incident.

More recently, she issued an order blocking the IRS from sharing taxpayer information with ICE.