Courts Keep Blocking Trump's Moves Against the Right to Vote

Today on TAP: We are protected not only by Congress’s rejection of the SAVE America Act. Courts are distinctly unsympathetic to Trump’s attempted takeover of elections via executive order.

https://prospect.org/2026/06/26/courts-keep-blocking-trumps-moves-against-right-to-vote/


A person votes via the drive-through drop box at the San Diego County Registrar of Voters office during California’s primary election, June 2, 2026. Credit: Michael Ho Wai Lee/SOPA Images/Sipa USA via AP Images

President Trump petulantly sidelined major housing legislation Wednesday, holding it hostage for his SAVE America Act, a measure that the Senate will never pass for lack of votes. The legislation, which would give the federal executive branch control of voting rolls, the better to conduct illicit purges and add barriers to registration and voting, is also likely to be held unconstitutional. That was underscored by several separate lower-court rulings this week.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Denise Casper, based in Massachusetts, issued a ruling permanently barring the administration from enforcing President Trump’s attempt to enact part of the SAVE America Act through an executive order issued in March 2025. The judge concluded that the president lacked the authority to impose requirements because the Constitution reserves the power of election administration to the states and to Congress. “[T]here is no evidence in this record of widespread ‘illegal voting, discrimination, fraud, and other forms of malfeasance and error’ within American elections, which the Executive Order purports to safeguard against,” she wrote.

In a separate ruling issued Thursday, District Court Judge Indira Talwani, also in Massachusetts, blocked other portions of the same executive order that required the United States Postal Service to limit delivery of mail ballots to states that complied with Trump’s demand to turn over voter rolls. Judge Talwani held that these provisions exceeded presidential authority and usurped powers to administer elections reserved to Congress and the states.

Trump’s order requires the homeland security secretary to draw up lists of eligible voters. The lists would be based on citizenship and nationalization records and data held by the Social Security Administration. State election chiefs would have to use those lists. Responding to a suit by several state attorneys general and the League of Women Voters, Judge Talwani declared Trump’s order “legally void” and added that it would “chill local election officials from complying with legal obligations to ensure that all eligible citizens may vote.”

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