In a ruling that clipped the wings of Donald Trump’s latest push to reshape federal elections, a Washington judge has blocked key elements of an executive order that would have imposed new citizenship checks and voter registration hurdles—moves critics feared could muzzle legitimate voices at the ballot box.
At the heart of the ruling: U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly declared that Trump overstepped his constitutional reach by trying to force federal election officials to verify voters’ citizenship status—a power the judge firmly said lies with the states, not the Oval Office.
While the decision delivered a win to advocacy groups like the League of United Latin American Citizens and the League of Women Voters, who had warned the new rules could disenfranchise eligible citizens, the court stopped short of striking down the entire order. The more controversial element targeting mail-in ballots—specifically, forbidding states from counting those arriving after Election Day—remains intact, for now.
That part, the judge said, is a matter for the states to challenge directly. And several Democratic-led states are doing just that, filing a separate lawsuit currently moving through a Massachusetts court.
Trump’s executive order, issued in March, had ignited alarm for its sweeping demands: rewriting federal voter registration forms to require passport-level proof of citizenship, screening public assistance recipients for immigration status before offering them registration, and mandating federal databases be handed over to a new agency led by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency—tasked with identifying non-citizens on voter rolls.
The plaintiffs argued this wasn’t just bureaucratic tinkering—it was voter suppression dressed up as reform. And the judge, at least partially, agreed.
Still, the battle is far from over. While the Department of Justice stands ready to defend Trump’s agenda, civil rights groups and state governments are equally prepared to keep fighting. With the 2024 election still reverberating, this courtroom clash is the latest front in an ever-expanding war over who gets to cast a ballot—and who gets to decide how.
