Judge Leibowitz’s decision underscores state jurisdiction over voter qualifications, limiting federal actions.
Published On 2 Oct 2026
A United States federal judge has ruled that a law criminalising voting by noncitizens is unconstitutional, dealing a setback for President Donald Trump’s administration as it cracks down on alleged election fraud ahead of November’s midterm elections.
US District Judge David Leibowitz in Miami dismissed a federal case on Thursday against Chelsea Cox, a Florida resident originally from Jamaica who had been charged in October 2025 with illegally voting in the 2020 presidential election.
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Leibowitz, who was nominated to the bench by former Democratic President Joe Biden, found that under the US Constitution, only individual states, not the US Congress, have the authority to set voter qualifications.
Since every state already requires US citizenship to vote, he wrote, it is up to Florida, not the Department of Justice, to prosecute Cox for breaking that rule. “Florida can and does,” he wrote, noting the state already has its own laws against the conduct Cox is accused of.
The ruling applies only to Cox’s case and it does not bind judges elsewhere, though about 45 similar cases remain pending nationwide. At least four other defendants have raised the same constitutional challenge.
Court filings show Cox entered the US as a tourist in 1999, overstayed her visa, and later used a fraudulent birth certificate from the US Virgin Islands, a US territory in the Caribbean, to obtain a Florida driver’s licence and register to vote in 2012.
Trump has falsely claimed that noncitizen voting, which is already illegal and rare, cost him the 2020 election, and has cast it as part of a broader effort by Democrats to dilute Republican support.
The Department of Justice has charged at least 60 people with the offence since Trump returned to office in January 2025.
Among 129 people charged with “voting by an alien” since 2021, none was accused of conspiring to sway an election, backing a candidate, or being paid to vote, according to Reuters. Most were found to be lawful permanent residents who had registered by mistake or on the incorrect advice of an election worker or government clerk.
Cox’s lawyer, Bruce Udolf, welcomed the ruling and said he hoped authorities would not now seek to deport her, citing her declining health conditions.