At the center of the case is 18 U.S.C. § 611, the federal statute that generally makes it a crime for a noncitizen to vote in an election involving candidates for federal office.
Congress enacted the provision in 1996. A violation can carry as much as one year behind bars, along with a fine.
But in a 31-page ruling issued October 1, Leibowitz concluded that Congress did not possess the constitutional authority to establish that voter qualification in the first place.
“Congress has no power to say who can vote or who cannot vote in federal elections. Some legal principles are so fundamental that they form American constitutional bedrock, and this case reveals a big one: When you’re prosecuted based on a law that Congress did not have the authority to pass, the prosecution cannot stand,” Leibowitz wrote.
The ruling immediately sparked a major constitutional fight over the respective powers of Congress and the states when it comes to determining who is eligible to participate in federal elections.
Leibowitz based his decision on provisions of Article I, Article II and the Seventeenth Amendment.
Although the Constitution gives Congress authority over the “Times, Places and Manner” of congressional elections, Leibowitz concluded that this power does not allow Washington to determine the qualifications of voters.
In other words, according to the judge’s reasoning, states establish who belongs in their electorate, while Congress has separate authority to regulate certain aspects of how federal elections are conducted.
Federal prosecutors had argued that Supreme Court precedent supported congressional authority in this area. Leibowitz was sharply skeptical of that argument.
He described the government’s principal precedent as “very, very weak,” before asking, “So why does the Government lead with such a weak hand? Because it’s the best hand it can play.”
The allegations against Cox make the constitutional dispute particularly striking.
According to federal prosecutors, Cox arrived in the United States from Jamaica on a tourist visa in 1999 and remained in the country after that visa expired.
The government further alleged that she later used a fraudulent U.S. Virgin Islands birth certificate to obtain identification and register to vote in Florida.
Prosecutors said Cox participated in multiple elections beginning in 2012 and ultimately cast a ballot in Broward County during the 2020 general election.
The federal government charged her in October 2025 under the noncitizen-voting statute.
Leibowitz’s ruling did not decide whether the alleged conduct occurred. Instead, the case turned on a more fundamental constitutional question: whether Congress itself had the power to criminalize that conduct through Section 611.
The judge concluded it did not.
Importantly, however, the decision is considerably narrower than declaring that noncitizens have a constitutional right to vote.
Cox brought an as-applied constitutional challenge. As a result, Leibowitz’s ruling resolves the federal charge against her but does not automatically invalidate Section 611 across the country or bind other federal courts.
Nor does the ruling eliminate state restrictions.
Florida law independently requires citizenship for voting, and Leibowitz specifically noted that state authorities remain free to enforce their own election laws.
The decision also does not resolve every possible federal criminal issue connected to falsely representing oneself as a U.S. citizen for purposes of registering or voting.
Still, the ruling could have consequences well beyond one Florida prosecution if appellate courts ultimately embrace Leibowitz’s constitutional analysis.
Other defendants prosecuted under Section 611 could attempt to raise similar challenges, while the Justice Department is now seeking to preserve a federal enforcement mechanism that has existed for three decades.
The Trump administration wasted little time pushing back.
The Justice Department filed a notice of appeal the following day, putting the dispute on course for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival also blasted the decision publicly.
“A Biden appointed judge in Florida says that federal bans on noncitizen voting are unconstitutional. The thing that never happens is now ‘constitutionally protected activity,” Percival posted on X.
That characterization goes further than the technical scope of the ruling. Leibowitz did not hold that noncitizen voting itself is constitutionally protected; he held that this particular federal criminal prohibition exceeded Congress’s constitutional authority as applied to Cox.
That distinction will likely sit at the heart of the coming appeal.
For now, the ruling applies to Cox’s case, while Section 611 remains available elsewhere unless other courts reach the same conclusion.
But the battle is far from finished.
The Eleventh Circuit will now have an opportunity to determine whether Leibowitz correctly interpreted the division of election authority between Congress and the states.
And given the unusual constitutional question involved, the dispute could eventually travel even higher.
What began as a misdemeanor prosecution over one ballot in Broward County may ultimately force the federal courts to answer a much larger question: exactly how far can Congress go when determining who may — and may not — participate in elections for federal office?
