NEW YORK, Oct 1 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge dismissed on Thursday a federal criminal case accusing a noncitizen of voting in an election, finding that the statute criminalizing noncitizen voting was unconstitutional.
The ruling by Miami-based U.S. District Judge David Leibowitz only applies to the case of Chelsea Cox, a Jamaican national living in Florida who was charged in October with illegally voting in the 2020 election.
But it appears to mark the first time a federal court has found the 1996 law a violation of the U.S. Constitution, dealing a blow to the Trump administration’s crackdown on noncitizen voting.
That crackdown has become a cornerstone of the Republican president’s efforts to highlight alleged election fraud ahead of November’s midterm elections, with his party fighting to retain majorities in both houses of Congress.
Trump says stricter enforcement is needed for election integrity, while critics say the effort exaggerates a rare problem and could undermine confidence in election results, echoing his false claims that fraud cost him the 2020 election.
The president has portrayed noncitizen voting as part of a broad Democratic Party conspiracy to dilute Republican power. But Cox was one of just 129 people charged with violating the law known as “voting by an alien,” according to a Reuters analysis published in July.
Leibowitz’s ruling does not bind the judges in the other cases, but it could be persuasive.
Lawyers for Cox argued that under the U.S. Constitution only states can set voter qualifications, not Congress. Every state requires U.S. citizenship to vote, but Cox’s lawyers said it was up to Florida, not the Department of Justice, to prosecute her for violating that requirement.
(Reporting by Tom Hals, Editing by Franklin Paul)
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