"[T]he U.S. Constitution ... does not grant the President any specific power over elections."
Judge Indira Talwani's ruling and its core holdings
A federal judge in Massachusetts struck down major sections of a March executive order that would have reshaped how ballots and voter lists are managed, finding those parts unconstitutional. Judge Indira Talwani of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts also declared another section of the order — the portion directing federal law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute noncompliant state and local officials — to be legally nonbinding. Talwani rejected the administration’s argument that the court could not review presidential action, writing that "Presidential action is not inherently unreviewable." She likewise declined to remove the president and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick as named defendants in the lawsuit.
The March executive order: what it required
The order instructed the Homeland Security secretary, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigrations Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration to compile lists of American voters for each state, including their supposed citizenship status. To build those lists, the agencies would rely on the Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, as well as Social Security and federal citizenship and naturalization records. The order required mail-in ballots to be sent in special barcoded envelopes for tracking, demanded that states provide lists of voters eligible for mail-in voting, threatened to deny ballots to states that refuse, and claimed the attorney general could withhold federal funding from noncompliant states. It also instructed the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute state and local election officials who issue ballots to ineligible voters.
Legal reasoning: HAVA, Civil Rights-era laws, and federal limits
The White House cited the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and Civil Rights-era voting laws as justification for the executive directives. Talwani found those statutes do not authorize the federal government to regulate state voter registration practices. "Notably, nowhere in HAVA does Congress prescribe who should be included on State voter lists," she wrote. "Further, neither in HAVA nor any other federal statute does Congress authorize the federal government to create their own voting database. Instead, Congress, consistent with the Constitution, has left that authority to the States alone." The ruling echoed earlier judicial conclusions that federal agencies lack the ability to create complete and accurate citizen lists: "it is clear that the federal agencies charged with compiling Confirmed Citizen Lists lack the ability to create complete and accurate lists of the U.S. citizens residing in every State."
State pushback, operational effects, and related litigation
Many states have already refused similar federal efforts to control voter registration. Talwani noted concrete operational impacts: states such as Connecticut were already pulling staff from critical activities, including translating election materials required under the Voting Rights Act, to develop compliance plans for the order. Nearly half of the states named in the lawsuit had already purchased mail-in ballots for the election cycle that were out of compliance with Postal Service envelope and design standards.
The ruling sits against a backdrop of repeated litigation: the Department of Justice has sued dozens of states to force them to hand over sensitive voter data, and in the 10 cases decided so far, states have won every one. Judges in those cases cited the executive branch’s lack of inherent authority to create state voter lists and criticized the use of Civil Rights-era laws in a way that could produce an "unreliable" database and disenfranchise legitimate voters.
What this means for states, federal agencies, and voters
- States: The decision affirms that states retain primary authority over voter lists and registration. Several states already rejected federal lists and diverted personnel to compliance planning; those dynamics are likely to continue so long as the executive route remains contested in courts.
- Federal agencies (DHS, USCIS, SSA): Talwani’s finding that agencies "lack the ability to create complete and accurate lists" directly challenges the practicality of building nationally compiled voter rolls from SAVE, Social Security, and naturalization records.
- Voters: The court rejected parts of the order that threatened ballot denial or funding withholding, reducing the immediate legal risk to voters posed by those mechanisms, but prior judicial concerns — that an unreliable federal database could disenfranchise legitimate voters — remain a central warning from the courts.
The ruling arrives amid continued political pressure to pursue similar changes by other means. On Wednesday, the president canceled a signing ceremony for a bipartisan housing bill in an attempt to push congressional Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act, which "would implement many of the same changes to U.S. elections." In a Truth Social post, the president said he considered passage of the bill to be a "National Emergency."
Judge Talwani's opinion makes a clear line between executive ambition and constitutional allocation of power: while the order attempted to centralize election-related databases and enforcement, the court concluded that Congress and the States — not the Presidency acting alone — remain the proper architects of voter registration systems. Whether that separation will be resolved legislatively or litigated further remains an open question as related bills and lawsuits proceed.
