Trump’s Executive Order on Proof of Citizenship for Elections Is Partly Blocked by Judge

A federal judge blocked part of an expansive executive order signed last month seeking to overhaul election laws, writing on Thursday that President Trump did not have the authority to require documentary proof of citizenship for all voters.

“Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the states — not the president — with the authority to regulate federal elections,” wrote Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the Federal District Court in Washington. She pointed to federal voting legislation being considered in Congress, adding that the president could not “short-circuit Congress’s deliberative process by executive order.”

But the judge did not block another key part of the executive order that sought to force a deadline for mail ballots in federal elections by withholding federal funding from states that failed to comply with the deadline. She found that the Democrats who brought the legal challenge did not have standing to do so. The legal concerns with this provision, Judge Kollar-Kotelly wrote, are being considered in other cases brought by state attorneys general.

The executive order, signed in early March, sought to direct the federal Election Assistance Commission to amend its voter registration form and require any potential voter to show documentary proof of citizenship to register. Acceptable documents included passports, military IDs or other state-issued identification that clarified citizenship. The executive order did not directly mention birth certificates as a valid way to prove citizenship.

About 21.3 million people do not have proof of citizenship readily available, according to a 2023 study by the Brennan Center for Justice, a voting rights and democracy group, and the University of Maryland. Nearly four million people do not have the documents at all because they were lost, destroyed or stolen.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly, noting that the Election Assistance Commission is “a bipartisan, independent regulatory commission,” wrote that the president cannot force the commission to change procedures without a vote by members, as required by the law establishing the commission.