Nicolai Haugsted
Federal judge puts Trump’s noncitizen voting campaign on shakier legal ground.
Donald Trump has made illegal voting by noncitizens a major part of his election-integrity campaign, repeatedly arguing that tougher federal action is needed to protect American elections.
A federal judge in Florida has now placed a significant legal obstacle in the administration’s path.
US District Judge David Leibowitz dismissed the federal prosecution of Chelsea Cox, a Jamaican national accused of illegally voting in the 2020 presidential election, after concluding that the 1996 federal law used against her violates the Constitution.
The decision appears to mark the first time a federal court has struck down the statute on constitutional grounds. Its immediate reach, however, is narrow: Leibowitz’s ruling applies only to Cox and does not bind judges handling similar cases elsewhere.
Judge says Congress crossed the line
Leibowitz’s reasoning comes down to a fundamental question about who gets to decide voter qualifications.
According to the judge, that authority belongs to the states rather than Congress. All states currently require US citizenship to vote in federal elections, but Leibowitz concluded that any prosecution of Cox for violating Florida’s eligibility requirements belongs with Florida authorities.
“Can the State of Florida prohibit and punish the exact conduct Defendant Cox allegedly engaged in here? This has already been decided elsewhere and is not addressed here: Florida can and does,” Leibowitz wrote according to Reuters.
Put differently, the ruling does not declare that noncitizens have a right to vote.
Instead, Leibowitz found that Congress lacked the constitutional authority to criminalize Cox’s alleged conduct through the particular federal statute prosecutors used against her. Florida remains able to prohibit and punish noncitizen voting under state law.
Trump administration argued the opposite
Federal prosecutors had defended Congress’ authority by pointing to the national government’s responsibilities over immigration and foreign affairs.
“Foreign interference in elections is clearly within the purview of Congress,” prosecutors argued in a court filing.
Leibowitz was not persuaded.
His ruling arrives at an inconvenient moment for the administration. The Justice Department has charged at least 60 people with noncitizen voting since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, while the president has made the subject a prominent part of his broader push against alleged election fraud ahead of November’s midterms.
Trump argues that stricter enforcement and proof-of-citizenship requirements are necessary to protect election integrity. Critics counter that his administration is devoting outsized attention to an offense that available evidence indicates is rare.
One woman and a long paper trail
Cox’s case itself is hardly a story about an innocent registration form accidentally landing in the wrong pile.
Government court filings say Cox entered the United States as a tourist in 1999 and remained after her visa expired the following year. Prosecutors said she later used a fraudulent US Virgin Islands birth certificate to obtain a Florida driver’s license and used those documents when registering to vote in 2012.
Records cited by Reuters show she subsequently voted in federal elections through 2020. Only her alleged 2020 vote fell within the applicable statute of limitations.
Her attorney, Bruce Udolf, urged authorities to stop pursuing the matter following Thursday’s dismissal.
“This is a situation that cries out for discretion by government officials and they’d be well-advised to walk away from this without further reprisal against her,” Udolf said.
Dozens of cases are still waiting
Thursday’s decision could acquire significance well beyond Cox without technically controlling another courtroom.
Roughly 45 noncitizen-voting prosecutions remain pending around the country, according to Reuters, and at least four other defendants have mounted similar constitutional challenges.
Judges overseeing those cases are free to reject Leibowitz’s interpretation. They can also find his reasoning persuasive, potentially turning one Florida dismissal into a much larger headache for the Justice Department.
Trump has portrayed illegal voting by noncitizens as part of a broader effort by Democrats to weaken Republican electoral power. Reuters’ examination of federal prosecutions, however, found 129 people charged under the “voting by an alien” law and no defendants accused of joining a conspiracy to alter an election, supporting a particular candidate or receiving payment for their vote.
Reuters also found that most defendants were lawful permanent residents who either registered accidentally or did so after receiving incorrect guidance from election workers or government employees.
Trump has made much bigger claims
Trump has repeatedly gone considerably further than the numbers documented in prosecutions.
On July 16, he claimed without providing evidence that 278,000 noncitizens had been registered in California, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Documented registration problems have occurred.
New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill said roughly 6,600 noncitizens were mistakenly registered because of a software error in 2023 and 2024, with about 400 ultimately casting ballots. The Justice Department later demanded identifying information about those voters.
Trump has also continued to falsely claim that fraud deprived him of victory in the 2020 presidential election. No evidence has established fraud on a scale capable of changing that election’s outcome.
