Judge blocks Trump effort to expand proof of citizenship requirement for voter registration

Senior District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly blocked a Trump directive in the order that the requirement be added to a federal voter registration form that is available for most Americans to use.

“Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States — not the President — with the authority to regulate federal elections. Consistent with that allocation of power, Congress is currently debating legislation that would effect many of the changes the President purports to order,” she wrote. “And no statutory delegation of authority to the Executive Branch permits the President to short-circuit Congress’s deliberative process by executive order.”

The judge is also pausing a separate provision in the executive order that would require federal agencies that offer registration opportunities to assess a person’s citizenship before providing a person a voter registration form.

Kollar-Kotelly, a Bill Clinton appointee who sits in Washington, DC, is considering cases filed by non-partisan groups including voting rights organizations, as well as a lawsuit brought by several entities of the Democratic Party.

The challengers in the cases before her targeted other parts of the executive order, including its provisions aimed at punishing states that count mail ballots that arrive in a certain period after Election Day.

The judge said that she was not blocking those provisions yet because the challengers’ arguments were procedurally premature or because they’re more squarely in front of other courts that are reviewing lawsuits filed by states challenging the executive order.