Making Daily Headlines · Page 8
Judge Restricts DHS Search for Noncitizen Voters
· New York time
A federal judge has restricted Department of Homeland Security field operations seeking to identify noncitizens who voted, finding that the operations likely violated the Voting Rights Act’s prohibition on voter intimidation, NPR reported. The ruling places a legal limit on the department’s methods in a particularly sensitive area of election administration. The judge’s finding is framed in terms of likely violations. It should not be inflated into a final conclusion about every aspect of the dispute. Nor does the existence of an operation establish that every person approached had voted unlawfully. An investigative objective is not a substitute for an individual finding. The practical issue is how enforcement activity interacts with protections for people exercising voting rights. The court’s restriction addresses the operations, making the method of pursuing the department’s stated goal a central part of the legal question. For Washington, this is another reminder that giving an initiative an official purpose does not exempt its execution from statutory limits. A government flowchart cannot simply run from “important objective” to “therefore permitted.” There is an inconvenient box in between labeled law. In this case, a federal judge has insisted that the department stop treating that box as decorative office stationery.
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