A federal judge in Miami has dismissed a criminal case against a Jamaican national accused of illegally voting, ruling that the decades-old federal law she was charged under is unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge David S. Leibowitz, sitting in the Southern District of Florida, issued a 31-page order Thursday. He found that 18 U.S.C. § 611, which makes it a misdemeanor for a non-U.S. citizen to vote in a federal election, exceeds Congress‘s authority under the Constitution. Only states can set voter qualifications, Leibowitz wrote, not Congress.
The defendant, Chelsea Cox, was charged in October 2025 with illegally voting in 2020. The ruling applies only to her case because her lawyers brought an as-applied challenge rather than a facial one. Still, it appears to be the first time a court has deemed the statute unconstitutional, and it could help others contest similar charges.
Leibowitz said state prosecutors in Florida could pursue Cox under state law for unlawfully voting, but the federal government could not. Shortly after the decision, the Justice Department moved to appeal. A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a later statement to Bloomberg Law, a spokesperson said, “We deeply disagree with the ruling and are evaluating our potential options including appeal.”
The judge called the case unusual from the start. “This is an unusual criminal case. It rests upon a forty-year-old federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 611, that prohibits the act of voting in a federal election by a non-U.S. citizen,” Leibowitz wrote. “Until very recently, no federal court has been presented with the following question about that statute: Did Congress have Constitutional authority to enact it? That’s unusual, all by itself.”
Leibowitz, appointed by President Biden, also criticized the Justice Department’s defense of the law. He said its principal argument relied on a Supreme Court case that is “very, very weak.” He added: “So why does the Government lead with such a weak hand? Because it’s the best hand it can play. And why is that? Because the text, structure, and original public meaning of the Constitution show that Congress does not have the constitutional power to enact this statute.”
Federal prosecutors had accused Cox of overstaying a U.S. tourist visa more than 20 years ago and obtaining a Florida driver’s license by presenting a fraudulent U.S. Virgin Islands birth certificate. They alleged she cast ballots in several federal elections starting in 2012, with a vote in the 2020 general election in Broward County leading to the charges last year. Cox’s lawyers asked the court to dismiss the charges earlier this year, arguing the law “exceeds Congress’s authority and intrudes on a power reserved to the States.”
Prosecutors pushed back, arguing the Constitution “provides that the federal government play a significant role in overseeing such elections.” They wrote: “Whether it is to regulate the manner of federal elections or to preserve a distinct privilege of federal citizenship, surely the United States has the right to exclude non-citizens from voting in federal elections.”
To help resolve the issue, Leibowitz appointed Paul Clement, a conservative legal heavyweight who served as solicitor general under President George W. Bush and is one of the country’s best-known Supreme Court litigators. In an amicus brief filed over the summer, Clement found that Congress likely “overstepped constitutional bounds in enacting §611.” He noted that while no state currently allows noncitizens to vote in federal elections, there is some history of states allowing the practice. Clement wrote that “states, not the federal government, determine voter qualifications.”
Cox’s attorney, Bruce Udolf, said in a phone conversation Friday night that his client is “gratified” by Leibowitz’s ruling and that it was a “huge relief to her.” Udolf said Cox recently underwent a medical procedure, and he is working with the government to determine the next steps in the case and whether the Trump administration moves to deport her.
The government had pointed to the Supreme Court’s messy 1970 decision in Oregon v. Mitchell, in which a plurality upheld the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970 lowering the federal voting age to 18. But a majority did not back the theory that Congress’s power came from the elections clause. Leibowitz said his finding does not prevent other forms of prosecution or punishment. States can prosecute these offenses, he wrote, and it may be possible for the federal government to remove migrants for violating local election laws or for Congress to draft a different statute that might pass constitutional muster. But upholding this prosecution, he said, would “allow Congress to establish and modify the parameters of its own special electorate, entirely divorced from what Florida or any other State may decide.”
“Some legal principles are so fundamental that they form American constitutional bedrock, and this case reveals a big one: When you’re prosecuted based on a law that Congress did not have the authority to pass, the prosecution cannot stand,” Leibowitz wrote. The case is United States v. Cox, S.D. Fla., No. 25-cr-60249.
