Biden judge rules Congress cannot ban noncitizens from voting in federal elections

A Biden-appointed Florida judge dismissed federal charges against a noncitizen who voted in 2020, holding Congress has no power to bar noncitizens from federal elections, a decision critics say guts a core safeguard.

U.S. District Judge David Leibowitz of the Southern District of Florida threw out the case against Chelsea Cox, a woman originally from Jamaica who cast a ballot in the 2020 presidential election despite not being a U.S. citizen.

In a 31-page opinion, Leibowitz held that a 1996 federal law criminalizing noncitizen voting in federal elections is unconstitutional as applied to her. The ruling leaves the federal government unable to continue the prosecution, though Florida retains authority to bring state charges.

Fox News Digital reported that Leibowitz, nominated by President Joe Biden in 2024 and confirmed by the Senate 64-33, grounded the decision in the Constitution’s assignment of voter qualifications to the states.

“The Constitution commits to the States, and the States alone, the general power to set voter qualifications in federal elections,” the judge wrote. “This is clear from both the text of the document and the debates at the Constitutional Convention in 1787.”

States set the rules, judge says, federal ban falls

Leibowitz rejected the government’s arguments that Congress’s immigration powers or the Elections Clause authorized the statute. He acknowledged Congress holds broad authority over immigration and noncitizens, yet said those powers are not blank checks that can override the states’ role on who may vote.

The judge further held the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act provision did not regulate election procedures or prevent fraud. Instead, he said, it created a federal voter qualification, something the Constitution leaves to the states.

The New York Post reported the decision marks the first federal court finding against the 1996 law, though it applies only to this case and is not binding elsewhere. The Justice Department has charged at least 60 people with noncitizen voting since President Donald Trump returned to office, and the dismissal hands a setback to that enforcement push.

Leibowitz noted Florida itself can prohibit and punish the same conduct. “Can the State of Florida prohibit and punish the exact conduct Defendant Cox allegedly engaged in here? This has already been decided elsewhere and is not addressed here: Florida can and does,” he wrote.

Cox voted in Broward County in 2020. The federal case is now over; any further action would have to come from the state.

Critics call the reasoning a mess that will not stand

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, co-author of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, did not speak evasively on X. “This insane ruling will certainly be overturned,” he wrote. “But it gives the game away: Democrats pretend we don’t need the SAVE Act because non-citizen voting is already illegal... while activist judges try to destroy laws banning non-citizens from voting!”

The SAVE Act remains stalled in the Senate and is unlikely to pass before the midterm elections, a reality that has already fueled Republican pressure to keep the chamber in session until citizenship verification requirements move.

Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow with Advancing American Freedom, told Fox the opinion is “patently wrong.” He agreed states set qualifications for citizen voters, then pointed to Congress’s total authority over naturalization under Article I, Section 8.

“That gives the federal government the authority to ban aliens from voting or otherwise in any way participating in the democratic process,” von Spakovsky said. He predicted the 11th Circuit will most likely squash the ruling.

Anhishek Kambil, a partner at Holtzman Vogel, said he would be surprised if the government did not prevail on appeal. He cited the Supreme Court’s decision in Oregon v. Mitchell, which recognized federal authority to set the voting age in federal elections, itself a voter qualification.

"So the Supreme Court has held, in an instance, that there is federal government authority to regulate in certain instances some types of qualifications of voters, but the way that this judge read it kind of made everything a mess"

Then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s 2011 opinion in Bluman v. FEC, later summarily affirmed by the Supreme Court, underscored the broader principle. Government may exclude foreign citizens from activities tied to democratic self-government, including voting, jury service, and certain public jobs.

“The Supreme Court has long held that the government (federal, state, local) may exclude foreign citizens from activities that are part of the democratic self-regulation in the United States,” Kavanaugh wrote. Bluman itself concerned campaign spending, not a criminal voting prosecution, yet the underlying authority is the same.

Trump enforcement meets a judicial roadblock

The Trump administration has intensified federal prosecutions and efforts to verify citizenship on state voter rolls. Those moves have produced legal fights with Democratic-led states and voting-rights groups, and they sit alongside other election-integrity fights the White House has pressed this year.

Readers following the citizenship-roll disputes will recall how the administration seized on admissions that thousands of noncitizens had landed on voter rolls in multiple states. The Florida ruling cuts against that enforcement track by removing a federal criminal tool in at least one district.

Breitbart reported Trump DHS General Counsel James Percival’s blunt reaction: a Biden-appointed judge in Florida says federal bans on noncitizen voting are unconstitutional. “The thing that never happens is now ‘constitutionally protected activity!’”

Leibowitz himself put the holding in stark terms: “When you’re prosecuted based on a law that Congress did not have the authority to pass, the prosecution cannot stand.”

Then-Sen. Marco Rubio voted to confirm Leibowitz. The 64-33 tally showed bipartisan support at the time. The judge’s most politically consequential decision to date now tests whether that confirmation left the door open to a reading of the Constitution that strips Congress of a power it has exercised for nearly three decades.

SAVE Act gridlock and the midterm clock

Lee’s point about the SAVE Act lands harder after this ruling. Democrats have long argued existing law already bars noncitizen voting, so new legislation is unnecessary. A federal judge just held the main criminal prohibition exceeds Congress’s power.

That contradiction is why Senate Republicans have kept the pressure on. Separate coverage has detailed how even some GOP voices call the current push theater and say reconciliation paths are closed, a frustration captured when Sen. Tillis described the SAVE Act effort as stalled theater with no clear path forward.

Meanwhile, other election-rule battles continue. The administration has also scored wins and faced immediate counter-suits on mail-ballot procedures, including a Supreme Court standing decision that left 23 states without a foothold and a rapid 24-state follow-on challenge.

Those fights, like the citizenship-verification drive, show the same underlying dispute: who controls the machinery of federal elections, and how far Washington can go to keep noncitizens off the rolls. For related context on the mail-ballot front, see the earlier report on how the Supreme Court sided with Trump on a mail-ballot order before Democratic attorneys general regrouped.

Reuters has reported more than 30,000 noncitizens discovered on U.S. voter rolls in recent reviews. Federal prosecutors had been using the 1996 statute as one tool against that problem. One district judge has now declared that tool unavailable in his courtroom.

The government is expected to appeal. Von Spakovsky and Kambil both forecast a reversal. Until a higher court rules, the Southern District of Florida has drawn a bright line: states may ban noncitizen voting and punish it; Congress, in this judge’s view, may not.

Election integrity does not enforce itself. When a federal court strips Congress of the power to keep noncitizens out of federal elections, voters are left depending on state prosecutors and a stalled Senate bill, and that is no substitute for a clear national rule.