Judge Rules 30-Year-Old Federal Law Banning Non-Citizen Voting Unconstitutional

A federal judge in Florida has dismissed a noncitizen-voting charge after declaring that Congress lacked constitutional authority to enact the prohibition, delivering a setback to President Donald Trump’s election-enforcement effort just weeks before the midterms.

The Justice Department moved quickly to appeal the ruling, setting up a legal fight over a federal statute that has been on the books since 1996.

U.S. District Judge David Leibowitz, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, issued the decision Thursday in the case of Chelsea Michelle Ann Cox, a Jamaican national accused of illegally voting in Florida during the 2020 presidential election.

His ruling turns on the division of power between Congress and the states over voter qualifications.

“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 in his 31-page decision.

The conclusion challenges a longstanding federal enforcement tool at a time when the Trump administration has made investigating suspected noncitizen voting a priority.

But the ruling does not authorize noncitizens to vote or erase Florida’s citizenship requirement.

Florida requires voters to be American citizens, as do the laws governing eligibility to vote in federal elections in every state. Leibowitz expressly recognized that Florida may prosecute violations of its own requirement.

The question before him was whether Washington can bring an independent prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 611, the federal law that generally criminalizes voting by noncitizens in federal elections.

Leibowitz concluded that Congress exceeded its authority when it enacted that statute.

“When you’re prosecuted based on a law that Congress did not have the authority to pass, the prosecution cannot stand,” he wrote.

That reasoning puts the scope of congressional election authority at the center of the coming appeal.

The Constitution’s Elections Clause gives Congress authority to “make or alter” regulations governing congressional elections. The dispute concerns how that authority relates to the separate constitutional provisions addressing voter qualifications.

Congress’s substantial power over election administration does not, by itself, resolve the distinction Leibowitz drew. The appeals court will now be asked to determine whether his interpretation improperly limits federal authority to enforce a citizenship restriction.

The underlying allegations against Cox involve both her immigration history and the documents prosecutors say she used to register.

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

Prosecutors alleged that she later obtained identification using a fraudulent U.S. Virgin Islands birth certificate and registered to vote in Florida in 2012.

They accused her of knowingly casting a ballot in Broward County on October 29, 2020. She was charged with unlawful noncitizen voting in October 2025.

Those allegations were not decided at trial. Leibowitz dismissed the federal voting charge because of his constitutional conclusion, rather than through a determination that Cox had not engaged in the alleged conduct.

The Trump administration filed its notice of appeal Friday. The dispute now heads to the Atlanta-based Eleventh Circuit.

The outcome could affect an enforcement campaign that has expanded considerably since Trump returned to office.

According to Reuters, at least 60 people have been charged with noncitizen voting since January 2025. Homeland Security investigators are examining hundreds of additional potential cases nationwide as the November 3 elections approach.

That pace represents a substantial increase compared with the statute’s earlier use.

A Reuters review found that only 129 people had been charged under the law during its first three decades. The administration’s recent cases therefore account for a notable escalation in federal attention to the offense.

The number of confirmed cases remains a very small fraction of the tens of millions of ballots cast in federal elections. The prosecution figures establish an increase in enforcement activity, rather than evidence that noncitizen voting is widespread.

For the administration, however, the statute provides a direct federal mechanism for prosecuting conduct it argues threatens the integrity of citizen-only elections.

Losing that mechanism would shift greater responsibility to state authorities, even though state citizenship restrictions would remain enforceable.

Other defendants have already raised the same constitutional objection.

Reuters reported last month that defendants in at least five cases in Florida and Wisconsin were challenging Congress’s authority to pass the 1996 prohibition. Leibowitz’s decision gives those defendants a ruling they can cite in support of their arguments.

Its immediate reach is limited.

The ruling applies to Cox’s case, does not automatically terminate prosecutions elsewhere and does not require other federal judges to adopt the same reasoning.

Nevertheless, it appears to be the first federal court decision declaring the statute unconstitutional, making it a significant development beyond the dismissal of one charge.

The coming appeal will determine whether that reasoning survives review or whether federal prosecutors can continue relying on the law as written.

With the midterms approaching, the administration is defending both a specific prosecution and its broader authority to enforce a federal ban on noncitizen voting. Florida’s own prohibition remains intact, but Washington’s role now faces a consequential constitutional test.