Court Cases

In this case, a Republican congressman from Illinois sued to challenge a state ballot counting deadline. His case was dismissed for lack of "standing" — meaning a personal stake in the outcome that is a prerequisite to filing a case in federal court. The lower courts ruled that it wasn't enough that the plaintiff's campaign had to spend money to cope with the election rule that he was challenging. When the Supreme Court agreed to review the case, we saw an important opportunity. Although we vigorously disagree with the congressman's position on the merits, it's vitally important that courts remain open to plaintiffs challenging voting rules that may disadvantage them. We have represented the League of Women Voters in such cases, and the government always seeks to challenge their standing, making the same types of arguments that kicked the plaintiff out of court here. Together with the League of Women Voters, the National ACLU, the ACLU of Illinois, and the Rutherford Institute, we filed an amicus brief in July 2025 to urge the Supreme Court to hold to its previous rulings permitting plaintiffs to sue based on economic harms to their organization. As we summarize our point in the brief: "political actors, candidates, and civic organizations may have standing to challenge electoral laws and regulations that affect their activities, force them to divert resources, and thus cause them concrete and tangible harms." Preserving access to the federal courts is fundamental to the defense of civil liberties and civil rights, because courts cannot vindicate these rights if they lack the power to hear the case in the first place.

This case challenges President Trump's attempt to require burdensome documentation to register to vote—a requirement that he lacks authority to impose and that will obstruct many voters' efforts to register. Under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 ("NVRA") and the Help America Vote Act of 2002, Congress created a voter registration form (the “Federal Form”) that each state must accept. Regardless of the contents of State voter registration forms, the Federal Form (as the Supreme Court has explained) “provides a backstop” that “guarantees . . . a simple means of registering to vote in federal elections will be available.” Congress created a bipartisan, independent Election Assistance Commission ("EAC") to maintain the Federal Form and consider changes—which can be made, according to the statute, only through notice-and-comment rulemaking and not by EAC members of a single party acting alone. Congress set strict requirement about what the Federal Form must and may not include. Every person who registers using the Federal Form must swear under penalty of perjury that they are a U.S. citizen. But Congress prohibited “any requirement for notarization or other formal authentication.” Congress further authorized the EAC to require “identifying information” and “other information” on the Federal Form only if the information “is necessary to enable the appropriate State election official to assess the eligibility of the applicant and to administer voter registration and other parts of the election process.” On March 25, 2024, President Trump issued an Executive Order instructing the EAC within 30 days to change the Federal Form to require that voters, in order to register, show documents proving their citizenship. But when Congress passed the NVRA in 1993, it had specifically considered and rejected adding such a requirement to the Federal Form. Since then, the EAC has repeatedly rejected requests to add such a requirement. And with good reason: many citizens lack the types of documentation that would suffice. For instance, roughly half of Americans, including more than two-thirds of Black Americans, lack a valid passport; obtaining one is costly and can take months. Birth certificates pose challenges, too: according to one survey, one third of voting-age women lack documentary proof of citizenship that reflects their current name (because many change their names when they marry); additionally, many of the roughly 1.3 million transgender Americans have changed their legal names, and some Americans—especially Black citizens—never received a birth certificate because of racially discriminatory laws. More fundamentally, President Trump lacks authority to order changes to the Federal Form or to direct the actions of the EAC, an agency set up by Congress to be independent. The Constitution’s Elections Clause vests Congress and the States—not the President—with authority to set rules for federal elections. Congress exercised this authority when it passed the NVRA. In acting contrary to that law, the President violates the separation of powers. On April 1, 2025, together with our co-counsel at the National ACLU, Brennan Center for Justice, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Latino Justice PRLDEF, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice, we challenged the Executive Order in federal court on behalf of the League of Women Voters and several other voting rights organizations. In light of the short deadline for the EAC to act, and with the required changes likely to affect voter-registration efforts by our clients in advance of a federal special election coming up in July 2025 in Arizona, we sought a preliminary injunction. Two other sets of plaintiffs sued as well, and the cases were consolidated; the case became known by one of the other case names, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) v. Executive Office of the President. On April 24, 2025, the day on which the EAC was required to change the form, the court issued a preliminary injunction blocking the EAC from imposing a documentary proof of citizenship requirement because the President's command that it do so violates the separation of powers. The court's thorough, 120-page opinion rejected the government's arguments that the case was premature and that our clients lacked standing to challenge the Executive Order, and the court held that the President lacked authority under the NVRA or the Constitution to impose a documentary proof of citizenship requirement: "If the President, acting alone, could dictate the content of the Federal Form, Congress’s careful structural choices would be for naught. . . . No statute expressly or impliedly grants the President authority to require documentary proof of citizenship on the Federal Form. Nor does any provision of the Constitution vest the President with that authority."