A federal judge on Thursday tossed a conservative legal group’s lawsuit against a controversial Washington, D.C., law that allows noncitizens — including illegal immigrants and foreign embassy staff members — to vote in municipal elections.
In a 12-page opinion, Judge Amy Berman Jackson said the plaintiffs, a group of U.S. citizen voters represented by the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), lacked standing to challenge the law because they could not demonstrate how they are harmed by noncitizens who vote and run for local office.
The complaint “does not include facts showing plaintiffs’ right to vote has been denied, that they have been subjected to discrimination or inequitable treatment or denied opportunities when compared to another group, or that their rights as citizens have been ‘subordinated merely because of [their] father’s country of origin,'” Jackson wrote.
“They identify nothing that has been taken away or diminished and no right that has been made subordinate to anyone else’s.”
The Local Resident Voting Rights Act, passed by the D.C. Council in October 2022, states that if a noncitizen is otherwise qualified to vote, they can do so in local elections so long as they have resided in Washington, D.C., for at least 30 days. It also permits noncitizen residents to run for D.C. government offices and serve on the city’s Board of Elections, according to court documents.
The law proved highly controversial and prompted an unsuccessful effort in Congress to overturn it. The IRLI lawsuit claimed that by permitting noncitizens to vote, the law “dilutes the vote of every U.S. citizen voter in the District.”
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