Biden Judge Rules Banning Noncitizen Voting is Unconstitutional, DOJ Says ‘Hold My Beer’

A Biden-appointed federal judge in Miami dismissed criminal charges against a Jamaican national accused of voting illegally in federal elections, ruling that the federal law banning noncitizen voting is unconstitutional. So to be clear: Congress passed a law in 1996 saying noncitizens cannot vote in federal elections, and a judge appointed in 2024 has decided that was a little too hasty.

U.S. District Judge David S. Leibowitz of the Southern District of Florida issued a 31-page order on October 1 in United States v. Cox, concluding that the statute amounts to a voter-qualification law and that the Constitution reserves that power to the states. The order applies only to the defendant in that case and does not bind other courts. Small comfort, but we’ll take it.

This is the Democratic Party at its finest and now the DOJ is involved.

How a Tourist Visa Became a Voter Registration Card

The defendant, Chelsea Michelle Ann Cox, is a Jamaican national who entered the United States on a tourist visa in 1999 and overstayed it. According to federal prosecutors, she later used a fraudulent U.S. Virgin Islands birth certificate to obtain a Florida driver’s license and register to vote. Prosecutors alleged she cast ballots in federal elections starting in 2012, including a vote in Broward County in the 2020 general election. Broward County. Naturally.

She was charged in October 2025 with a misdemeanor under 18 U.S.C. Section 611, a provision enacted in 1996 as part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, carrying a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a fine. Then Judge Leibowitz stepped in and decided the whole statute was the real problem here.

In his ruling, Leibowitz cited Article I, Article II, the Seventeenth Amendment, and debates from the 1787 Constitutional Convention to argue that Congress’s authority over the “Times, Places and Manner” of federal elections does not extend to defining who gets to vote. Congress has no power to say who can vote or who cannot vote in federal elections,” he wrote, adding that “some legal principles are so fundamental that they form American constitutional bedrock.” The constitutional bedrock he landed on, apparently, is that a 30-year-old federal law protecting election integrity is the villain in this story.

Leibowitz also took a swipe at the Justice Department’s legal defense, describing the Supreme Court precedent prosecutors relied on as “very, very weak” and writing, “So why does the Government lead with such a weak hand? Because it’s the best hand it can play.” To his credit, that is a solid burn. To his detriment, the noncitizen voting ruling is still going to haunt the Eleventh Circuit for a while.

DOJ Appeals, Florida Stays Ready, and the Eleventh Circuit Gets to Clean This Up

The Justice Department moved to appeal the very day after the ruling came down. Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival posted on X: “A Biden appointed judge in Florida says that federal bans on noncitizen voting are unconstitutional. The thing that never happens is now ‘constitutionally protected activity.'” Sarcasm well earned, counselor.

The ruling does leave state law intact. Leibowitz noted that Florida already prohibits noncitizen voting and may prosecute Cox under its own statutes. The order also does not touch a separate federal offense covering false claims of citizenship made to register or vote, so prosecutors may still have options there. Good to know that lying on a voter registration form remains, for now, frowned upon at the federal level.

The appeal heads to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, and the statute remains in force in all other districts in the meantime. But the ruling is a reminder that elections have consequences, judicial appointments have consequences, and apparently overstaying a tourist visa and voting for 12 years has consequences only if a judge feels like enforcing the law that day.