{"id":70439,"date":"2026-08-25T23:47:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T23:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/70439\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T23:47:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T23:47:11","slug":"judge-blocks-enforcement-of-ohio-proof-of-citizenship-rule-for-voter-registration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/70439\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge blocks enforcement of Ohio proof-of-citizenship rule for voter registration"},"content":{"rendered":"

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) \u2014 A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked enforcement of an Ohio requirement<\/a> that voters show proof of citizenship when registering to vote at a motor vehicle bureau, a rule that took effect for the first time this year.<\/p>\n

Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, said he would immediately appeal.<\/p>\n

In a lawsuit brought on behalf of the Ohio Alliance of Retired Americans and the progressive group Red Wine & Blue by the Democrat-aligned Elias Law Group, U.S. District Court Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. in Cleveland ruled that the requirement appears to conflict with the National Voter Registration Act, which he said takes precedence.<\/p>\n

His injunction suspends the practice of requiring such documentation ahead of the Oct. 5 registration deadline for this fall\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n

It comes as President Donald Trump pushes Congress<\/a> to pass a bill<\/a> that would, among other election changes, require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote.<\/p>\n

Ohio is among a handful of states with proof-of-citizenship laws in place for the first time this year<\/a>. South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming also put similar requirements on the books for this year\u2019s midterms. Arizona<\/a> had one already in force for state and local elections.<\/p>\n

In South Dakota on Tuesday, the League of Women Voters and a Sioux Falls voter filed a lawsuit over that state\u2019s new proof-of-citizenship requirement for voter registration. Among their requests is that a judge force the state to accept photocopies of eligible ID forms and also to rescind guidance requiring people using certain ID types to register in person.<\/p>\n

Ohio\u2019s requirement was added last year to its motor voter law. In his ruling, Solomon wrote that the requirement \u201cis more than the signed attestation to U.S. citizenship that Ohio\u2019s other voter registration methods accept. Therefore, (the challenged provision) likely conflicts with the NVRA, because it is more than \u2018the minimum amount of information necessary.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He further found that Ohio\u2019s overall \u201cmotor voter\u201d registration process has illegally been limiting the option to sign up to vote to those who successfully obtain a driver\u2019s license, rather than offering it to everyone who submits an application for one, as federal law requires.<\/p>\n

Ben Stafford, a partner at Elias Law, said in a statement that Ohio voters would now be able to register at the BMV without the requirement to show citizenship paperwork. He described the regulation as \u201cexactly the type of government-imposed barrier that the NVRA exists to prevent.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The judge\u2019s order prevents Ohio from requiring any driver\u2019s license applicant to produce proof-of-citizenship documents before being offered the chance to register to vote, even those applicants turned away for lack of the proper paperwork. It doesn\u2019t cover applicants who indicate they are not U.S. citizens.<\/p>\n

LaRose criticized the ruling and pointed to a case in Franklin County, which includes Columbus, that he said proves the process Solomon has required doesn\u2019t work. The case involved a lawful permanent resident of the U.S. who was ineligible to vote but did so in 2018 after she said a clerk at the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles mistakenly led her to believe she was allowed to do so. The woman was found not guilty by reason of entrapment.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder this order, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles would be required to offer a voter registration form to a person who is applying for a driver\u2019s license, even if that person can\u2019t verify that they\u2019re a citizen,\u201d LaRose said in a statement. \u201cWe strongly disagree with that decision, and I\u2019ve asked our legal team to file an immediate appeal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Solomon\u2019s decision aligned with court decisions elsewhere.<\/p>\n

In May, in the first major legal test of Trump\u2019s citizenship-related election demands, a federal judge in New Hampshire ruled<\/a> that the state must make voter registration easier by letting applicants attest to their U.S. citizenship if they don\u2019t have the documents to prove it.<\/p>\n

When New Hampshire\u2019s law took effect for the first time, for local elections in 2025, some election clerks said they knew of would-be voters who couldn\u2019t produce the necessary documents<\/a> and were turned away \u2014 for example, women who had changed their last names when they married.<\/p>\n

In June, a federal judge permanently barred<\/a> the Trump administration from implementing most of the president\u2019s first executive order<\/a> on elections, including a requirement that people show documentary proof of citizenship when they register to vote. The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper in Boston effectively converted what was a preliminary injunction blocking much of the attempted overhaul into a permanent one.<\/p>\n

A 2025 University of Maryland study estimates that 21.3 million Americans<\/a> eligible to vote do not have documents or have easy access to the documents<\/a> required to prove citizenship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) \u2014 A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked enforcement of an Ohio requirement that voters…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[362,36453,24974,25338,38,286,36452,50,115,8,880,9,2677,1456,67,3617,36451,2009,7,54,6912,1471,760,3077,69,22494,16346],"class_list":["post-70439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-top-stories","tag-2026-elections","tag-ben-stafford","tag-citizenship","tag-denise-casper","tag-donald-trump","tag-elections","tag-frank-larose","tag-general-news","tag-government-and-politics","tag-headlines","tag-midterm-elections","tag-news","tag-oh-state-wire","tag-ohio","tag-politics","tag-sd-state-wire","tag-solomon-oliver-jr","tag-south-dakota","tag-top-stories","tag-u-s-news","tag-ut-state-wire","tag-utah","tag-voting","tag-voting-rights","tag-washington-news","tag-wy-state-wire","tag-wyoming"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/117158821519029589","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}