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<\/a><\/p>\nPublished On 2 Oct 20262 Oct 2026<\/p>\n
A United States federal judge has ruled that a law criminalising voting by noncitizens is unconstitutional, dealing a setback for President Donald Trump\u2019s administration as it cracks down on alleged election fraud ahead of November\u2019s midterm elections<\/a>.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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. \u201cFlorida can and does,\u201d he wrote, noting the state already has its own laws against the conduct Cox is accused of.<\/p>\n The ruling applies only to Cox\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s licence and register to vote in 2012.<\/p>\n