Civil rights groups filed suit in California federal court on 28 October seeking to end a Trump administration initiative investigating possible noncitizen voting, arguing it intimidates naturalized citizens a week before the midterm elections.
Civil rights groups filed suit on Wednesday in California federal court seeking to end a Trump administration initiative that deploys investigators to look for noncitizen voters, according to Reuters. The American Civil Liberties Union and its affiliates brought the case, which names the Department of Homeland Security and Secretary Markwayne Mullin, and US Citizenship and Immigration Services and Director Joseph Edlow, as defendants.
The suit argues the programme illegally intimidates naturalized US citizens and risks disenfranchisement, and alleges that state election officials are being pressed to deny ballots to certain voters on the basis of flawed eligibility data. The programme at issue, the Unlawful Voter Initiative, was launched by DHS in August and directed USCIS staff to generate lists of people to investigate for possibly voting without US citizenship, which the law requires.
Reuters reported separately on Wednesday that the administration has issued more than 100 subpoenas for records on tens of thousands of voters in at least a dozen states as part of the effort. Theresa Lee, an attorney with the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, said the administration could not keep creating political stunts to sow distrust in elections and lay the groundwork to question results it does not like. DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to Reuters.
The filing, the defendants and the August launch of the initiative are confirmed by Reuters reporting, as is the scale of the subpoena effort. The administration's substantive defence of the programme was not established in the reporting checked for this story, and no such defence is presented here.
The timing gives the case its weight. It lands one week before the 3 November midterm elections, in which the Republican Party is fighting to retain control of both houses of Congress, and it sits alongside a separate court fight over ballots in California, where a federal judge has questioned a Justice Department bid to segregate about 20,000 ballots. Together, the cases put the courts in the middle of how the final days of voting are administered.
The suit asks the court to end the initiative, but it does not by itself change any ballot that has already been cast, and no ruling has yet been reported. The next steps to watch are whether the court acts before election day and whether DHS answers the central allegation: that its eligibility data is flawed and that its investigations fall hardest on naturalized citizens who are entitled to vote.