A US judge dismissed a federal case on Thursday that accused a Jamaican national of illegally voting, finding the law criminalizing noncitizen voting was unconstitutional and delivering a blow to the Trump administration’s campaign against alleged election fraud.
The ruling by Miami-based US District Judge David Leibowitz applies only to the case of Florida resident Chelsea Cox, who was charged in October 2025 with illegally voting in the 2020 election.
It is not binding for judges in other cases.
It marks a setback for President Donald Trump’s administration on noncitizen voting, a cornerstone of its push to highlight alleged election fraud ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Republicans are fighting to retain majorities in both houses of Congress.
The Justice Department has charged at least 60 people with noncitizen voting since Trump returned to office in January 2025.
The ruling by Leibowitz, who was nominated by Democratic President Joe Biden, appears to be the first time a federal court has found the 1996 law a violation of the US Constitution.
Leibowitz wrote that under the US Constitution only states can set voter qualifications, not Congress. Every state requires US citizenship to vote, and Leibowitz said it was up to Florida, not the Department of Justice, to prosecute her for violating that requirement.
“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,” Leibowitz wrote. --->READ MORE HERE
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| George Frey/Getty Images |
US District Judge David Leibowitz dismissed charges against a Jamaican-born woman who voted in the 2020 election
A Biden-appointed judge is being labeled an "activist judge" by conservative critics after ruling the federal government's application of a law barring noncitizens from voting in elections violates the Constitution in a federal criminal case.
In a 31-page ruling, U.S. District Judge David Leibowitz of the Southern District of Florida dismissed federal charges against Chelsea Cox, a woman originally from Jamaica who voted in the 2020 presidential election despite not being a U.S. citizen.
The ruling comes as the Trump administration has intensified efforts to prevent noncitizens from voting, including through federal prosecutions and attempts to verify citizenship on state voter rolls, sparking legal battles with Democratic-led states and voting-rights groups.
President Donald Trump's election integrity efforts have been driven in large part by his and his allies' belief that the 2020 election was "stolen," an unproven claim he continues to maintain.
Leibowitz ruled that the Constitution gives states — not Congress — the authority to determine who qualifies to vote in elections, effectively ruling that a provision of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) criminalizing noncitizen voting in federal elections is unconstitutional as applied to Cox.
"The Constitution commits to the States, and the States alone, the general power to set voter qualifications in federal elections," Leibowitz wrote in his ruling. "This is clear from both the text of the document and the debates at the Constitutional Convention in 1787."
The ruling garnered sharp blowback from Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who is co-author of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which is being stalled in the Senate and unlikely to be passed before the midterm elections.
"This insane ruling will certainly be overturned," Lee wrote on X. "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!"
Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow with Advancing American Freedom, agreed that Leibowitz's ruling will most likely be "squashed" by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
"Judge David Leibowitz’s opinion that the federal law barring aliens from voting is unconstitutional is patently wrong," Spakovsky told Fox News Digital.
"It is true that states have the constitutional authority to set the qualifications of citizens who are eligible as voters in federal elections. But he ignores the fact that in Article I, Section 8, Congress is given 100% authority over naturalization." --->READ MORE HERE
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