Judge Rules Congress Lacks Power to Make Noncitizen Voting a Federal Crime

A federal judge in Miami has ruled that a decades-old federal law making it a crime for noncitizens to vote in federal elections is unconstitutional, a decision that could complicate the Justice Department’s push to prosecute such cases as the midterm elections approach.

Judge David Leibowitz of the United States District Court in Miami, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, found on Thursday that the Constitution leaves the power to set voter qualifications mainly to the states, not Congress, according to Reuters, as published by Al Jazeera, and TNND. He rejected prosecutors’ arguments that the law rested on Congress’s powers over immigration, foreign affairs and the administration of elections. The law dates from 1996, and prosecutors had charged the offense as a misdemeanor carrying up to a year in prison, TNND reported.

The judge dismissed the federal case against Chelsea Cox, a Florida resident originally from Jamaica who was charged in October 2025 with voting illegally in the 2020 presidential election. Court filings show she entered the country as a tourist in 1999, overstayed her visa and later used a fraudulent birth certificate to obtain a Florida driver’s license and register to vote in 2012, Reuters reported. Leibowitz noted that every state already requires citizenship to vote and that Florida has its own laws against what Cox is accused of doing, so the state, not federal prosecutors, can bring charges.

Cox’s lawyer, Bruce Udolf, welcomed the decision and said he hoped the government would not now seek to deport his client, citing her declining health.

The ruling applies only to Cox’s case and does not bind other judges. But it lands in the middle of an enforcement campaign. The Justice Department has charged at least 60 people with the offense since President Trump returned to office in January 2025, and about 45 similar cases are pending across the country, according to Reuters. At least four other defendants have raised the same constitutional argument.

When Reuters reviewed 129 noncitizen voting prosecutions brought since 2021, it found no defendant accused of trying to change an election result, backing a specific candidate or taking money to vote. Most of those charged held green cards and had signed up to vote by mistake, some because an election worker or clerk told them they could. Noncitizen voting is already illegal and rare, though Trump has falsely claimed it cost him the 2020 election.

Supporters of federal enforcement argue that a national crime gives every federal race the same protection, regardless of how vigorously an individual state chooses to pursue offenders. That question, and the broader one of how far Congress can reach into the rules for who votes, is likely to be tested on appeal. James Percival, the Department of Homeland Security’s general counsel, and Hans von Spakovsky criticized the ruling and predicted it would be reversed, TNND reported.