Voting is an essential American freedom; however, an executive order by President Donald Trump is illegally and unconstitutionally threatening that freedom for millions of Americans.
President Trump signed an executive order on March 25, 2025, directing several federal agencies to change the rules for federal elections. This is a clear violation of the Constitution.
The Constitution gives the power to regulate elections to the states. They set the eligibility standards for voting and the rules that govern when, where and how we vote.
Congress — not the president — has the power to pass laws that set national voting standards and override state laws governing federal elections. The Constitution does not give the president any role in setting election rules. The demands in Trump’s executive order are illegal and unconstitutional.
On behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Secure Families Initiative (SFI) and Arizona Students’ Association (ASA), Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and State Democracy Defenders Fund (SDDF) are suing the Executive Office of the President over this unlawful presidential overreach.
This coalition is the first group to file suit against President Trump's unlawful actions. Each of these organizations has members whose freedom to vote is threatened by Trump’s unconstitutional executive order.
Also named in the lawsuit are Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), each of which are directed by the executive order to take action to carry out the president’s unlawful demands.
What is illegal about the executive order?
The executive order would require voters to jump through burdensome and unnecessary hoops when registering to vote by requiring them to provide additional documentation proving their citizenship.
More than 21 million Americans are unable to access the additional documents that would be required to register to vote under the rules of this executive order. More than half of Americans don’t have a U.S. passport, and the vast majority of Americans don’t have a current document that both indicates their U.S. citizenship and meets the requirements laid out in the order.
Military and overseas voters in particular would be negatively impacted by these additional documentation requirements. The order requires the documents to be provided even for those voters serving in uniform and living abroad. Most military IDs do not indicate citizenship and therefore would not be able to be used as proof of citizenship under the order. Federal law does not give President Trump and Secretary Hegseth the authority to impose these barriers on the Americans defending our country.
The executive order illegally targets mail-in voting, a method that is popular, safe and has been utilized by millions of Americans since the Civil War.
The president is trying to singlehandedly override the laws in 17 states that allow ballots cast and mailed by Election Day, but received afterwards, to be counted. This could disenfranchise many voters — especially overseas and military voters whose mail-in ballots take longer to arrive than those living within the United States.
The president lacks the authority to tell states to make this change or direct the EAC to withhold federal election funding if the states don’t adopt the president’s policy preferences. Attorney General Bondi and the Department of Justice don’t have the authority to override election laws that allow ballots to be counted after Election Day.
President Trump is threatening yet another independent agency: the Election Assistance Commission (EAC).
Designed by Congress to be independent and bipartisan with two Republicans and two Democrats, the EAC is responsible for creating and maintaining the federal voter registration form. Its decisions — including any decision to change the requirements of the federal registration form — must have a majority vote within the commission.
Now, President Trump is trying to tell the EAC to change the federal voter registration form to make it harder for Americans to register to vote. The EAC is an independent agency and does not fall under the authority of the president. It is illegal for the president to direct the EAC to change federal election rules.
The courts must step in to preserve the freedom to vote.
President Trump’s executive order is an unlawful attempt to take control of our elections and make it harder for millions of Americans to exercise the freedom to vote.
CLC is urging the courts to declare this executive order illegal and unconstitutional.
With your support, CLC is determined to prevent the Trump administration from undermining the essential American freedom to vote. Keep up with our lawsuit here.
