Washington, Oregon sue to block Trump's executive order overhauling elections

Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown on Friday announced his office is suing the Trump administration over its attempt to overhaul U.S. elections.

The lawsuit filed on Friday targets a sweeping executive order requiring documentary proof of U.S. citizenship as a condition of registering to vote, despite federal law already barring noncitizens from voting. The order also mandates requirements around data sharing between states and the federal government, prosecuting election crimes, and removing noncitizens from voter rolls.

Vote-by-mail states like Washington and Oregon, a co-plaintiff in the lawsuit, are also prohibited under the executive order from counting ballots that have been postmarked but not received by Election Day. Nineteen other states had already sued over the same executive order, but Washington’s and Oregon’s mail voting systems warranted a separate legal challenge, Brown said.

RELATED: 19 states sue over Trump's voting executive order, arguing it's unconstitutional

“Neither the Constitution nor any federal law gives the president authority to set rules for how states conduct elections,” Brown said during a press conference Friday morning. “It is the states that decide how voters are registered, it is the states that decide how ballots are counted. It was Washington that decided to adopt vote by mail, which led to us having one of the highest rates of voting in the nation.”

While emphasizing the impact the executive order could have on Washington’s elections, Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said more than 300,000 ballots were received by the Washington counties after Election Day 2024.

“Under this executive order, every one of those votes would have not been counted,” Hobbs said.

He added that requiring documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration would disproportionately affect those with low income, seniors, and naturalized citizens.

“Many citizens do not have access to these documents like passports or enhanced IDs,” Hobbs said. “Making registration contingent on the ability to pay for and obtain specific documents risks disenfranchising voters.”

Brown on Friday also announced two additional new legal challenges against the Trump administration, which respectively target attempts to shrink several federal agencies and terminate grants issued to medical research institutions by the National Institutes of Health.

RELATED: Washington joins multi-state lawsuit against Trump administration for cutting billions in public health funding

Washington has joined 20 other states in suing over Trump’s executive order seeking to dismantle several federal agencies, including:

• The Institute of Museum and Library Services, which awards grant funding to museums and libraries nationwide.
• The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, which provides mediation and dispute resolution services to workers and employers.
• The Minority Business Development Agency, which provides access to capital, contracts, and other opportunities to minority-owned businesses.

RELATED: ​​Entire staff at federal agency that funds libraries and museums put on leave

That lawsuit argues that flattening those agencies “will immediately put at risk hundreds of millions of dollars in grant funding on which the states depend, and undermine library programs, economic opportunity, and the free flow of commerce throughout the country.”

A third lawsuit filed by Brown’s office on Friday aims to stop the Trump administration’s large-scale termination of grant funding issued by the National Institutes of Health, as well as delays in reviewing new grant applications. It’s the second lawsuit filed by Washington state against the administration over the issue.

“This is different from the first case, only in terms of the types of grants it's impacting,” Brown said at Friday’s press conference. “The claims are essentially the same as our prior case.”

RELATED: How far could Trump’s NIH funding cuts set medical innovation back? By decades, UW researchers warn

The grant cancellations would be particularly impactful to the University of Washington, which receives the most federal research funding of any public university in the country. The cuts in question have disrupted research related to sexual assault victim trauma, cognitive diseases such as Alzheimer’s, and the prevention of chlamydia infections, according to the Attorney General’s Office.