Judge Voids Noncitizen Vote Law

Miami — U.S. District Judge David Leibowitz on 1 October dismissed the federal criminal case against Chelsea Cox, a Florida resident charged with illegally voting as a noncitizen, and held that the main federal statute that makes noncitizen voting a crime violates the Constitution.

The statute at issue is Title 18, Section 611 of the U.S. Code — often called the “voting by an alien” law — which Congress passed in 1996 and which makes it a federal misdemeanor for certain noncitizens to vote in elections for federal office. Leibowitz wrote that the Constitution does not give Congress the power to set voter qualifications for those elections. Under the Constitution’s Elections Clause and related text, he held, that power belongs primarily to the states. Every state already requires U.S. citizenship to vote in federal elections; Leibowitz said Florida, not the Justice Department, is the government that can prosecute the conduct alleged in Cox’s case.

“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.

What the case was about

Cox entered the United States as a tourist in 1999 and stayed after her visa expired, according to government filings summarized by Reuters. Prosecutors alleged she used a fraudulent U.S. Virgin Islands birth certificate to obtain a Florida driver’s license, registered to vote in 2012, and cast ballots in federal elections through 2020. Only the 2020 vote fell inside the federal statute of limitations, the charging theory that remained before the court. She was charged in October 2025.

Leibowitz’s order applies only to Cox’s case. It is not binding on other federal judges. Reuters reported that it appears to be the first time a federal court has held the 1996 law unconstitutional. About forty-five similar cases are pending around the country, and at least four other defendants have raised the same constitutional challenge. Those judges may treat Leibowitz’s reasoning as persuasive, but they are free to disagree.

Why the ruling matters now

Since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, the Justice Department has charged at least sixty people with noncitizen voting, making the campaign a visible part of the administration’s election-integrity agenda ahead of the November midterms. Critics say the crackdown exaggerates a rare problem and risks eroding confidence in elections; the White House and Justice Department did not immediately comment on the Miami ruling, according to Reuters.

A July Reuters investigation of “voting by an alien” prosecutions found no defendant accused of conspiring to sway an election, backing a candidate, or taking payment for a vote, and reported that many of those charged were lawful permanent residents who registered by mistake or after bad advice from a clerk. Illegal voting can also trigger deportation; Cox’s lawyer, Bruce Udolf, said he hoped the government would not move to remove her, citing her health.

Prosecutors had argued that Congress is better placed than the states to handle immigration and foreign interference in elections. Leibowitz rejected that framing as a basis for a federal voter-qualification crime that the Constitution, on his reading, does not authorize.