Federal Judge permanently blocks Trump's executive order requiring proof of citizenship to vote

President Donald Trump will not be able to require Americans to furnish proof of citizenship when they register to vote, after a federal judge moved to prevent his administration from implementing most of his 2025 executive order on elections, the Associated Press reported. The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper in Boston converted a preliminary injunction she issued a year ago into a permanent one.

The Boston judge made clear that the Constitution gives States and Congress authority to regulate elections and that the order's requirements violated the separation of powers, rejecting the administration's argument that the lawsuit—brought by Democratic state attorneys general—was premature because the rules were not implemented yet. "The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections," she wrote in her judgment.

The executive order, formally titled "Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections," sought to overhaul the nation's election process through a series of sweeping measures beyond the citizenship proof requirement. It set a hard deadline for mail-in ballots to be received by Election Day, discounting those that arrived after, and threatened to withhold federal funding from non-compliant states, among other provisions.

This was not the only executive order seeking to reshape the process. The President signed another in March this year, directing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) to compile state-by-state lists of eligible citizens and instructing the U.S. Postal Service to send mail-in ballots only to individuals enrolled on those lists. That order also faces multiple legal challenges.

The orders are not the only avenue Trump has pursued in his second term to reshape elections. He has also pushed Congress to pass the  Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which similarly required proof of citizenship to vote. The bill passed the House in 2025 and is awaiting a Senate vote, with Trump calling for the elimination of the filibuster to advance it, according to Yahoo News. The orders appeared to be an effort to bypass the legislative process, the report added.

On Wednesday, Trump announced he would not proceed with the scheduled signing of a bipartisan housing bill. "Today's Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency," he wrote on Truth Social. Democrats have made clear they will not support what they call an "unnecessary obstruction" to voting rights, leaving the bill with only 53 votes, short of the 60 required to become a law.