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A coalition of Democratic officials from 23 states, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and the attorneys general of California, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Washington, is suing the federal government over President Donald Trump’s new executive order to regulate mail voting.
The lawsuit, which is being filed in Massachusetts, says the order violates the U.S. Constitution by usurping the states’ power to administer their own elections. The Constitution delegates states the primary authority to run elections, subject to rules set by Congress, but gives the president no role.
Trump has long claimed, without evidence, that mail voting is rife with fraud and has sought to curtail it. On Tuesday, he signed an executive order that directs the U.S. Postal Service not to deliver mail ballots from any voter not on a pre-approved list of voters who will receive mail ballots and requires each authorized mail voter’s envelope to have a unique barcode.
The order also directs the Department of Homeland Security to create a list of adult citizens residing in each state and provide that list to states 60 days before a federal election.
The order isn’t Trump’s first attempt to push into how states run elections. Last March, he issued an executive order that, among other things, tried to require proof of citizenship when registering to vote. States sued over that order on similar legal grounds, and courts have so far blocked most of that order’s major provisions.
The state lawsuit is at least the fourth that has been filed against the executive order since Trump signed it late Tuesday. Two separate coalitions of voting-rights advocacy groups sued Thursday, with one filing a lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts and the other in Washington, D.C. Democratic Party groups filed the first lawsuit in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.
Shapiro, along with Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, a Republican, had immediately decried the order when it was signed on Tuesday and signaled legal action was forthcoming.
Shapiro joined the lawsuit in his capacity as governor, rather than on behalf of the state. Suing on behalf of a state is a responsibility that generally falls to the attorney general, and Pennsylvania’s current attorney general, Republican Dave Sunday.
The new lawsuit is only the latest judicial clash between the Trump administration and the states over election issues. The U.S. Department of Justice has sued 30 states, including Pennsylvania, plus the District of Columbia over their refusal to turn over complete versions of their voter rolls. The Pennsylvania Department of State argues that turning over the data would be illegal because it contains private information.
Pennsylvania’s motion to dismiss that case is currently pending.
This story will be updated with more information when available.
Votebeat Editor-in-Chief Carrie Levine contributed.