A Biden Judge Says Congress Can’t Ban Noncitizen Voting. DOJ Is Appealing.

Leave a CommentA Biden Judge Says Congress Can’t Ban Noncitizen Voting. DOJ Is Appealing.Judicial

A federal judge in Miami has thrown out a 30-year-old law that makes it a crime for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. The Justice Department moved right away to appeal.

U.S. District Judge David Leibowitz, an appointee of President Biden, dismissed the case against a Jamaican national accused of voting illegally in 2020. In a 31-page order, he ruled that the federal ban itself is unconstitutional, CBS News reported.

“Congress does not have the constitutional power to enact this statute,” the judge wrote, according to CBS.

The case behind the ruling

The defendant, Chelsea Cox, came to the United States on a tourist visa and stayed after it expired, according to Reuters. Prosecutors say she used a fake birth certificate to get a Florida driver’s license, registered to vote in 2012, and voted in federal elections through 2020. Only the 2020 vote was recent enough to be charged.

She was charged under 18 U.S.C. § 611, passed in 1996. It makes voting by a noncitizen in a federal election a federal misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison.

Federal prosecutors argued that Congress has the power to pass the law because it controls immigration, foreign affairs and protection against foreign meddling in elections, according to RedState’s account of the case.

The judge disagreed. He held that the Constitution gives the states, not Congress, the power to decide who is qualified to vote. He also said the Justice Department’s defense rested on a Supreme Court case he called “very, very weak,” CBS reported.

Twisted Thinking

Here is the twist: Judge Leibowitz did not say noncitizens may vote. He said it is up to the states to ban and punish it.

“Can the State of Florida prohibit and punish the exact conduct Defendant Cox allegedly engaged in here? Florida can and does,” he wrote, as quoted by Reuters.

In other words, the judge believes Florida, not federal prosecutors, should handle cases like this one.

The case also drew an unusual supporter for the defense. Paul Clement, who served as solicitor general under President George W. Bush, filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that Congress went beyond its constitutional limits when it passed the law, CBS reported.

Why this matters for 2026

This appears to be the first court ruling to strike down the statute, according to CBS. It lands one month before the November midterm elections.

The stakes are real. The Justice Department has charged at least 60 people with illegal voting by noncitizens since President Trump returned to office in January 2025, Reuters reported. About 45 similar cases are still pending around the country. RedState noted that at least four other defendants are making the same constitutional challenge.

A ruling from one district judge does not erase the law nationwide. But if other judges follow his lead, those federal cases could start falling apart. The appeal will now go to a higher court.

The bottom line

Americans broadly agree on one simple point: only citizens should choose America’s leaders. Congress wrote that into federal law in 1996, and it has stood for three decades. Now one Biden-appointed judge says the law was never valid, just as the Trump administration is finally enforcing it.

Conservatives respect states’ rights, and the judge is right that Florida bans noncitizen voting too. But a federal election picks federal officials. A president, a senator or a member of Congress serves the whole nation, and every legal voter is harmed when an illegal ballot cancels out their vote. Leaving enforcement to the states means a noncitizen’s vote in a lax state can be met with a shrug. It is reasonable for the federal government to protect its own elections, and the Justice Department is right to fight this ruling.

This case also shows why election integrity laws matter. If courts start pulling federal tools away, the burden falls on states to check citizenship and prosecute cheaters. Readers should watch the appeal closely and ask their state lawmakers a simple question: if Washington’s ban is struck down, is our state ready to enforce its own?

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1A. Rewrite: A Judge Tossed the Federal Noncitizen Voting Charge. Here’s What He Didn’t Do.

Rewritten from the owner’s draft (“The Statute Fell. The Requirement Did Not.”). This is an alternative to article 1 on the same story, so run one or the other.

Alternative headlines:

  • A Miami Judge Says Florida, Not Washington, Should Prosecute Noncitizen Voting
  • The Judge Who Struck the Noncitizen Voting Law Also Told Congress How to Fix It

Category: Politics

Tags: noncitizen voting, election integrity, federal courts, Justice Department, Congress, Florida

A federal judge in Miami ruled on Thursday, October 1, that Congress did not have the power to pass the 1996 law that makes it a federal crime for a noncitizen to vote in a federal election.

Posts on X quickly claimed the judge ruled that “Congress has no power to stop noncitizens from voting in federal elections.” That’s not what happened, and the difference matters.

The judge did not say noncitizens may vote. He did not say states can’t require citizenship. He said the federal government was the wrong one to bring this charge. The state of Florida, he wrote, can still prosecute it.

The case

Chelsea Cox is a Jamaican national living in Florida. Federal prosecutors say she voted in the 2020 presidential election while knowing she was not a citizen. She was charged on October 22, 2025, with a single misdemeanor under 18 U.S.C. § 611, the federal law that bars noncitizens from voting in federal elections.

U.S. District Judge David Leibowitz, appointed by President Biden, threw out the charge in a 31-page order.

What the judge decided

His reasoning starts with the Constitution. It says voters for the House must have the same qualifications as voters for the larger house of their state legislature. The Seventeenth Amendment says the same for the Senate. So, the judge reasoned, deciding who is qualified to vote is up to the states.

Congress does have power over the “times, places and manner” of federal elections. But Leibowitz said that covers how elections are run, not who gets to vote. In his view, § 611 is a voter qualification written by Congress. “Congress does not have the constitutional power to enact this statute,” he wrote.

He rejected the Justice Department’s arguments one by one. Prosecutors leaned on a 1970 Supreme Court case, Oregon v. Mitchell. The judge said that case was so split that it “simply does not control.” Prosecutors also argued that Congress’s power over immigration covers the law. He disagreed, saying the Constitution’s specific rules on voter qualifications come first.

The question was new. The judge called it “an issue of first impression,” meaning no court had decided it before.

What the ruling does not do

This part is getting lost online.

It is narrow. The judge ruled only that the law could not be used against Cox in this case. He declined to strike it down entirely, and noted Congress likely does have power over elections in Washington, D.C.

It is not binding nationwide. One district judge’s order doesn’t bind other judges. About 45 similar federal cases are pending, Reuters reported.

Florida can still act. “Florida can and does” ban and punish this conduct, the judge wrote. State prosecutors can still charge Cox.

It leaves Congress an easy fix. This may be the most important line in the order. The judge wrote that a federal law making it a crime for a noncitizen to vote in a federal election “in violation of a voter qualification set by the states” would “pass muster easily under every constitutional provision.” Florida already requires citizenship to vote. In other words, Congress can rewrite the law to back up state citizenship rules, and the judge says that version would stand.

Don’t confuse it with other cases

This ruling is different from fights over President Trump’s March 2025 executive order on elections. In October 2025, federal Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington blocked the order’s requirement for documentary proof of citizenship on the federal registration form. She held that the Constitution gives election rules to the states and Congress, not the president.

And the Supreme Court has been moving the other way on checking citizenship. On September 25, it voted 6-3 to let the administration keep running its SAVE database, which states use to check the citizenship of registered voters, CBS News reported. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson dissented.

What comes next

The Justice Department has already appealed, CBS reported. The case now goes to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta and could end up at the Supreme Court.

The timing is the problem. The ruling lands a month before the November 3 midterms. Until a higher court acts, defense lawyers in other noncitizen voting cases have a new argument to use, and federal prosecutors face new doubt about bringing charges.

The bottom line

Read past the headline and this ruling is narrow. It frees one defendant from one federal charge, for now. It doesn’t make noncitizen voting legal anywhere. Florida can still prosecute under its own law.

But it’s still a problem. A law that has protected federal elections for 30 years is now under a cloud, right before an election. The Justice Department is right to appeal quickly, and higher courts should settle this before more cases fall apart.

Congress shouldn’t wait. The judge himself spelled out a version of the law he says would “pass muster easily.” Lawmakers should pass it. Americans agree that only citizens should choose their leaders, and that rule needs the strongest legal footing it can get.

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