Judge Amir Ali blocked the Trump administration from withholding counterterrorism grants over states’ election rules, ruling federal agencies lacked congressional authority to impose the conditions. Those included citizenship checks for voters and election workers.
FEMA’s summer grant announcement said 20% of grants for states and urban areas would be withheld until they complied. Jurisdictions using electronic systems that count votes with barcodes or QR codes had to submit plans to switch to hand-marked paper ballots, and every jurisdiction had to show it audits results. FEMA expects to award 56 grants through a program totaling more than $1 billion.
The plaintiffs were Columbus, Ohio; Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee; and El Paso and Harris counties in Texas. They argued FEMA lacked authority under its statute and the Constitution to set election rules through the grants.
