Miami judge rules federal noncitizen voting law unconstitutional

A Miami federal judge has dismissed a prosecution against a noncitizen accused of voting in the 2020 US presidential election, finding the federal law banning noncitizen voting unconstitutional — apparently the first time a federal court has done so, according to Reuters.

US District Judge David Leibowitz ruled on Thursday that Chelsea Cox, a Florida resident originally from Jamaica who was charged in October 2025, cannot be tried under the 1996 statute. His reasoning, Al Jazeera reports, is that only individual states — not Congress — may set voter qualifications, and since every state already requires US citizenship to vote, the matter belongs to Florida: “Florida can and does,” he wrote.

The decision applies only to Cox’s case and binds no other judge, but it is a setback for the Trump administration’s crackdown on alleged election fraud ahead of November’s midterm elections. About 45 similar cases remain pending, and at least four other defendants have raised the same challenge.

The Justice Department has charged at least 60 people since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025. Of 129 charged with “voting by an alien” since 2021, none was accused of conspiring to sway an election, and most were lawful permanent residents who registered by mistake.

Filings show Cox entered the US as a tourist in 1999, overstayed, and used a fraudulent US Virgin Islands birth certificate to obtain a Florida driver’s licence and register to vote in 2012. Her lawyer, Bruce Udolf, welcomed the ruling and said he hoped she would not face deportation, citing her declining health.