Courts Keep Blocking Trump’s Moves Against the Right to Vote

President Trump petulantly sidelined major housing legislation Wednesday, holding it hostage for his SAVE America Act, a measure that the Senate will never pass for lack of votes. The legislation, which would give the federal executive branch control of voting rolls, the better to conduct illicit purges and add barriers to registration and voting, is also likely to be held unconstitutional. That was underscored by several separate lower-court rulings this week.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Denise Casper, based in Massachusetts, issued a ruling permanently barring the administration from enforcing President Trump’s attempt to enact part of the SAVE America Act through an executive order issued in March 2025. The judge concluded that the president lacked the authority to impose requirements because the Constitution reserves the power of election administration to the states and to Congress. “[T]here is no evidence in this record of widespread ‘illegal voting, discrimination, fraud, and other forms of malfeasance and error’ within American elections, which the Executive Order purports to safeguard against,” she wrote.

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In a separate ruling issued Thursday, District Court Judge Indira Talwani, also in Massachusetts, blocked other portions of the same executive order that required the United States Postal Service to limit delivery of mail ballots to states that complied with Trump’s demand to turn over voter rolls. Judge Talwani held that these provisions exceeded presidential authority and usurped powers to administer elections reserved to Congress and the states.

Trump’s order requires the homeland security secretary to draw up lists of eligible voters. The lists would be based on citizenship and nationalization records and data held by the Social Security Administration. State election chiefs would have to use those lists. Responding to a suit by several state attorneys general and the League of Women Voters, Judge Talwani declared Trump’s order “legally void” and added that it would “chill local election officials from complying with legal obligations to ensure that all eligible citizens may vote.”

In yet another related case this week, in a lawsuit brought by the League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia Sparkle Sooknanan blocked the Trump administration’s effort to create a database using Social Security numbers and citizenship status. She found that the administration has knowingly fed inaccurate data to states that are now “actively” and “haphazardly” conducting purges of the rolls.

“[T]he federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Judge Sooknanan wrote in a 75-page ruling. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

The Justice Department is simultaneously suing states to get their detailed voter rolls, saying that it wants to be able to scrutinize the lists, to make sure they are properly maintained and comply with federal law. Nine federal district judges have ruled on behalf of the states in those fights, including several appointed by Trump. This week, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Cincinnati, became the first appellate court to rule on the question. The panel ruled 2-1 that the Justice Department cannot force Michigan to turn over the state’s lists of registered voters.

All of these and related cases will end up before the Supreme Court. Trump has had a good week at the high court so far, but is likely to lose in his efforts to end birthright citizenship and to take over the Federal Reserve. My bet is that he will also lose the effort to take over elections. In general, the courts have drawn a bright line between the president’s ability to direct executive agencies internally and extra-constitutional efforts to unilaterally change election rules assigned to Congress or to the states.