Court decision could spell disaster for DC law allowing noncitizens ability to vote

An appeals court on Friday revived a legal challenge against a Washington, D.C., law allowing noncitizens, including illegal migrants, the ability to vote in local elections.

An Obama-appointed judge in March 2024 dismissed a lawsuit challenging the district law giving certain noncitizens the right to vote in elections within the District of Columbia, ruling that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue. However, an appeals court Friday breathed life back into that challenge, finding that the law could dilute the voting power of citizens.

“As long as each person can be said to have suffered a distinct and concrete harm, we do not hold it against some plaintiffs that they may have company,” wrote Judge Raymond Randolph, a George H.W. Bush appointee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, according to court documents. “The alternative would be to render government action unreviewable as long as it disadvantages everyone equally.”

“But if, for example, a municipality made all residents ineligible to vote, surely those individuals would have standing to sue,” Randolf continued. “Here, the injury the plaintiffs assert relates to their specific votes in elections in which they intend to participate. That injury is enough to confer standing.”

The D.C. Council passed the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022 in October of that year, permitting green card holders and even illegal migrants the right to cast their ballots in local races beginning in 2024.

GOP lawmakers have long criticized the local ordinance, arguing it dilutes the voting power of American citizens when allowing non-citizens to participate in the election process. Around 90,000 migrants live in the District of Columbia, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

The House of Representatives passed legislation in May 2024 that would’ve repealed the D.C. voting law, but it died when it reached the Senate, which was controlled by the Democrat Party at the time. That bill sailed through the lower chamber of Congress again earlier in June, and with a GOP-controlled Senate, it stands a much greater chance of reaching President Donald Trump’s desk.

“I applaud today’s decision by the appeals court to reverse and remand a district court judge’s wrongful dismissal of a case against D.C.’s unconstitutional noncitizen voting laws,” Texas GOP Rep. August Pfluger, the sponsor of the House bill, said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The case, brought by residents rightly concerned about having their voting power being diluted by noncitizen voting, deserves to be heard.”

“It’s simple: only U.S. citizens should be allowed to vote in U.S. elections,” Pfluger continued. “This is yet another reason the Senate must swiftly pass my D.C. noncitizen voting bill so the President can sign it into law and restore election integrity and sanity in D.C.”

The Trump administration has also taken great strides in preventing noncitizen voting, such as allowing state officials to more easily access federal databases to verify an individual’s citizenship and having U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services partner with the Social Security Administration to better prevent noncitizen participation in elections.

The Friday ruling does not invalidate the D.C. voting law outright, but forces a district judge to consider the case. It remains a violation of federal law to vote in national elections.

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