Judge blocks Ohio voter citizenship proof law, state files appeal
A federal judge in Ohio has temporarily blocked a state law requiring documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration, prompting Secretary of State Frank LaRose to announce an immediate appeal.
A federal judge in Ohio has temporarily blocked a state law that would require voter registrants to provide documentary proof of citizenship, a decision that has triggered an immediate appeal from state officials. Judge Solomon Oliver Jr., who was appointed during the Clinton administration, issued a preliminary injunction on Tuesday, halting the implementation of House Bill 54. The law would have required applicants to present a passport, current driver's license, certificate of naturalization, or birth certificate when registering to vote.
The ruling stems from the case Red Wine & Blue v. the Ohio Secretary of State, in which the court weighed whether the state's new requirements conflict with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, commonly known as the Motor Voter Act. That federal law instructs states to offer voter registration opportunities using the same information provided when applying for a driver's license. It also states that the voter registration portion of a driver's license application may not require information that duplicates what is already collected on the license form itself.
In his decision, Oliver wrote that the court grants the plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction, preventing the state from relying on House Bill 54's amendment to require documentary proof of citizenship before offering the opportunity to register to vote. He argued that because driver's license forms already ask about citizenship status, requiring additional documentation amounts to redundancy. "As the rest of Ohio's voter registration scheme demonstrates, election officials do not need documentary proof of citizenship to assess a voter registration applicant's citizenship because signed attestation of citizenship is enough," Oliver wrote.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced that his office strongly disagrees with the ruling and has asked its legal team to file an immediate appeal. "I will vigorously defend our legal authority to safeguard our voter rolls and protect the integrity of Ohio's elections," LaRose said in a statement. He pointed to a recent case in Franklin County in which an Ohio woman admitted to voting illegally as a lawful permanent resident in 2018. The judge in that case found her not guilty by reason of entrapment, noting that a Bureau of Motor Vehicles clerk had told her to register despite her knowing she was not a citizen.
"The Franklin County case proves it's not enough to just have a person's attestation," LaRose added. "Ohio has a constitutional requirement to ensure that only U.S. citizens are voting in our elections."
The decision is the latest development in the ongoing national debate over state-level voting requirements designed to prevent non-citizens from participating in U.S. elections. The National Voter Registration Act does not explicitly prohibit states from requiring proof of citizenship, but the judge's interpretation suggests that such requirements may conflict with the federal framework when they duplicate information already collected. The appeal will now move to a higher court, where the balance between state election integrity measures and federal voter registration rules will be examined further.
