A Miami judge threw out the federal noncitizen-voting ban — for exactly one defendant

On Oct. 1, a federal judge in Miami dismissed the illegal-voting charge against Chelsea Cox and held that Congress had no constitutional power to enact the 1996 ban on noncitizen voting — at least in her case. The ruling does not let noncitizens vote in Florida. It decides who gets to punish it. A follow-up to our Oct. 15 report on noncitizens on Florida's rolls.

• The ruling: U.S. District Judge David S. Leibowitz (Southern District of Florida) held 18 U.S.C. § 611 — the 1996 federal ban on voting by noncitizens — unconstitutional as applied to Cox, and dismissed her federal charge. Reporting describes it as the first time a court has so held.
• The reasoning: the Constitution commits the power to set voter qualifications to the states; Congress's Elections Clause power covers the time, place, and manner of elections, not who the electorate is. The court appointed former Solicitor General Paul Clement as an independent amicus; he reached the same conclusion.
• What it does not do: it does not make noncitizen voting legal anywhere. Florida's constitution and statutes still limit voting to citizens, and unqualified voting is a third-degree felony under Florida law (§ 104.15). Leibowitz's own words: Florida "can and does" prohibit and punish the conduct.
• The scope: the order binds only Cox's case. It is not binding on other judges, but about 45 federal noncitizen-voting cases are pending nationwide, at least four other defendants have raised the same argument, and Reuters has counted at least 60 such prosecutions since January 2025.
• What's next: the Justice Department appealed to the 11th Circuit almost immediately. A ruling before the Nov. 3 election is unlikely. A separate federal law against falsely claiming citizenship to vote was not challenged and remains in place.

Start with the narrow fact, because the wide headlines skip it. On October 1, U.S. District Judge David S. Leibowitz dismissed the federal illegal-voting charge against Chelsea Michelle Ann Cox, a Jamaican national living in Florida who prosecutors say voted in the 2020 presidential election in Broward County. In a 31-page order, Leibowitz held that the statute she was charged under — 18 U.S.C. § 611, the federal ban on voting by noncitizens, enacted in 1996 — is unconstitutional as applied to her, because Congress never had the power to enact it. CBS News and Bloomberg Law both described the decision as the first time a federal court has held the statute unconstitutional.

The case against Cox, as prosecutors allege it: she entered the United States on a tourist visa in 1999 and stayed after it expired, obtained a Florida driver's license using a fraudulent U.S. Virgin Islands birth certificate, registered to vote in 2012, and cast ballots in multiple federal elections. Only the 2020 vote was charged; the earlier ones were past the statute of limitations. Those are allegations — the judge did not decide whether they are true. The case turned entirely on a constitutional question: who gets to set the qualifications for voting in a federal election, Congress or the states?

Leibowitz's answer: the states. "The Constitution commits to the States, and the States alone, the general power to set voter qualifications in federal elections," he wrote. Congress's Elections Clause authority, in his reading, reaches the time, place, and manner of elections — the procedures — not the definition of the electorate itself. The question was unusual enough that Leibowitz appointed former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement as an independent amicus to argue the constitutional issues; Clement concluded Congress likely exceeded its bounds. The Justice Department's counterargument — that election qualifications in federal elections are a federal matter, and that a fractured 1970 Supreme Court decision upheld Congress lowering the federal voting age — did not carry the day.

What the ruling does not do matters as much as what it does. It does not hold that noncitizens may vote. Every state, Florida included, requires citizenship; Florida's constitution and statutes (§§ 97.041, 104.15) make voting by an unqualified elector a third-degree felony, and Leibowitz said so himself: "Can the State of Florida prohibit and punish the exact conduct Defendant Cox allegedly engaged in here? ... Florida can and does." The order also leaves untouched a separate federal statute prosecutors have used in other cases — the law against falsely claiming U.S. citizenship in order to vote — and it does not resolve Cox's immigration status. The immediate effect of the decision is jurisdictional: if Cox is to be punished for voting, Florida must bring the case, not Washington.

The reason one defendant's dismissal is national news is the docket behind her. The Trump administration has made noncitizen-voting prosecutions a stated priority; Reuters has counted at least 60 federal prosecutions since January 2025, and roughly 45 cases are currently pending. At least four other defendants have raised the same constitutional argument Cox won on. Her ruling binds none of their judges — but it hands each of them a 31-page roadmap, written by a judge who appointed a conservative former solicitor general to test the reasoning before adopting it. It also lands in the middle of the congressional fight over the SAVE Act and federal proof-of-citizenship requirements, where the same question — who defines the electorate — is the whole argument.

For Florida, the ruling shifts weight onto machinery this page has already covered. On Oct. 15, the Wire reported the Joint Task Force analysis showing 5,612 noncitizens removed from Florida's rolls between 2020 and mid-2026, with 1,827 of them having cast 7,035 ballots. That cleanup was Florida's own work, done under state authority — exactly the authority Leibowitz says is the only kind the Constitution grants here. The Justice Department appealed his order to the 11th Circuit almost immediately; appellate timelines make a decision before the Nov. 3 election unlikely, and no Florida state charges against Cox have been reported. The Wire will follow the appeal, and whether state prosecutors pick up the cases the federal government may no longer be able to bring.