Biden Judge Blocks 30-Year-Old Law Barring Non-Citizen Voting

A federal judge appointed by former President Joe Biden has dismissed a charge against a Jamaican national accused of voting illegally in Florida, delivering a setback to the Trump administration’s election-enforcement efforts and opening a constitutional battle over Congress’s authority.

U.S. District Judge David Leibowitz ruled Thursday that the federal prohibition on noncitizen voting could not constitutionally be applied to Chelsea Michelle Ann Cox. Federal prosecutors filed a notice of appeal Friday, moving the dispute toward the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The 31-page decision rests on Leibowitz’s conclusion that states hold the constitutional authority to establish voter qualifications and that Congress exceeded its powers when it enacted the statute used against Cox.

“Congress has no power to say who can vote or who cannot vote in federal elections — that foundational power is reserved for the States,” Leibowitz wrote.

The ruling concerns 18 U.S.C. § 611, which Congress enacted in 1996 through the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. The provision generally prohibits noncitizens from voting in elections involving candidates for president, vice president, the Senate or the House of Representatives.

Leibowitz, who serves in the Southern District of Florida and was confirmed in 2024, rejected the Justice Department’s arguments that Congress could enact the prohibition through its Elections Clause authority and its powers over immigration and foreign affairs.

His decision leaves Florida’s citizenship requirement intact.

“Can the State of Florida prohibit and punish the exact conduct Defendant Cox allegedly engaged in here?” Leibowitz wrote. “Florida can and does.”

Every state requires citizenship to vote in federal elections. The immediate dispute therefore concerns which government may prosecute the alleged conduct under the challenged law.

According to court records, Cox entered the United States from Jamaica on a tourist visa in 1999 and remained after it expired.

Prosecutors allege that she subsequently used a fraudulent U.S. Virgin Islands birth certificate to obtain a Florida driver’s license and registered to vote in 2012.

The government says Cox cast ballots in elections between 2012 and 2020. The federal charge before Leibowitz concerned her alleged vote in the 2020 presidential election because earlier votes were outside the applicable statute of limitations.

The dismissal resolves that charge on constitutional grounds without determining the truth of the prosecution’s allegations at trial.

At the heart of Leibowitz’s analysis is the Constitution’s treatment of qualifications for congressional voters. Those provisions tie eligibility to the qualifications for voters in the relevant state legislative elections.

Leibowitz reasoned that allowing Congress to impose a separate federal qualification would permit it to establish “its own special electorate” apart from the qualifications set by states.

“Some legal principles are so fundamental that they form American constitutional bedrock,” he wrote. “When you’re prosecuted based on a law that Congress did not have the authority to pass, the prosecution cannot stand.”

The Justice Department takes a different view of Congress’s constitutional powers. Its appeal will give a higher court the opportunity to examine whether the federal government may enforce the citizenship restriction independently of state prosecutions.

The ruling appears to be the first federal decision finding the 1996 statute unconstitutional on these grounds. Its reach, however, is limited to the case before Leibowitz.

Cox pursued an “as-applied” challenge, asking the court to prevent the statute’s use against her rather than strike it down nationwide. Other federal judges are not bound by Leibowitz’s conclusion, and pending prosecutions elsewhere are not automatically dismissed.

Even within South Florida, judges have reached different conclusions.

U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Becerra rejected a similar constitutional challenge in September in another prosecution. The conflicting outcomes underscore the importance of appellate review for a law that has been on the books for three decades.

The stakes extend beyond Cox’s case because President Donald Trump’s administration has stepped up prosecutions involving alleged noncitizen voting.

According to Reuters, the Justice Department has charged at least 60 people with noncitizen voting since Trump returned to office in January 2025. Approximately 45 similar cases were pending nationwide when Leibowitz issued his ruling.

Several defendants have advanced constitutional arguments resembling Cox’s, giving defense attorneys elsewhere a decision to cite even though it does not control their cases.

For the administration, the appeal is an effort to preserve a federal enforcement tool aimed at protecting citizen-only elections. For the courts, it presents a dispute over the division of election authority between Congress and the states.

Federal prosecutors have now taken the first step toward overturning the dismissal. The eventual appellate outcome could determine whether the administration can continue using Section 611 in comparable cases or must leave prosecution of that conduct to state authorities.