By the time the hearing reached the federal courthouse on Thursday, the dispute had already pulled in election-administration details at a moment when states and federal officials are preparing for the fall midterm elections. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols heard arguments in a lawsuit seeking to stop President Donald Trump’s executive order, which lawyers for Democratic-aligned plaintiffs said would restrict voters’ ability to cast ballots by mail.
Nichols did not rule from the bench on the request for an order blocking officials from implementing the March 31 order, according to the account of the proceedings. The litigation was described as one of several lawsuits filed to halt the order, with the plaintiffs arguing that the Constitution gives states and Congress—rather than the president—authority to decide how elections are run.
The hearing framed the case as a continuation of a legal fight that follows Trump’s earlier election order tied to documentary proof of citizenship. The AP report said that earlier order was largely halted by multiple federal judges on similar grounds, setting the stage for the administration’s latest push after a voting bill Trump backed stalled in Congress.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys argued that the president cannot rewrite election rules in a way that would advantage the Republican Party, and they said the order’s requirements were designed to pressure states into limiting voter registration and ballot access. Orion Nevers, an attorney representing the NAACP, told the judge, “It is harming our clients every day in the middle of an election season.”
The plaintiffs said the executive order calls for the federal government to create a list of eligible voters for each state and for the Postal Service to limit absentee ballots based on those lists. The AP report said the order directs the Department of Homeland Security to compile a list of adults the U.S. government has purportedly “confirmed” as U.S. citizens and to share the list with each state at least 60 days before each federal election. It also said the order seeks to prohibit the U.S. Postal Service from sending absentee ballots to those not on each state’s approved list.
Attorneys for different groups emphasized their own concerns about how the policy would operate on the ground. Lalitha Madduri, an attorney for Democratic Party plaintiffs, told the judge, “There isn’t a way to lawfully compile it.” Danielle Lang, who represents the League of United Latin American Citizens, said the executive order was aimed at creating what she described as “the maximum amount of chaos and confusion” for local election officials, adding, “They need clear direction.”
The Justice Department asked Nichols to dismiss the claims, and the government argued that the lawsuit was filed too early. Stephen Pezzi, a Justice Department attorney, suggested the dispute was premature, calling it “shadowboxing” for the plaintiffs to challenge a list that has not yet been created. Pezzi also told the judge that it was “a little hard to address these questions in the abstract,” after Nichols pressed him on why dissemination of the list to states would be lawful.
The hearing unfolded against the backdrop that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to vote by mail, the AP report said, and that Trump has repeatedly implied without evidence that mail voting involves mass fraud. The report also said the executive order is the second related to elections since Trump won his second term in the White House, and it noted that Nichols had questioned both sides during the arguments while providing no clear indication of how he would rule.