Washington State Attorney General Nic Brown, joined by counterparts from 22 other states and the District of Columbia, filed a federal lawsuit on Friday against President Donald Trump’s administration. The suit seeks to block the president’s new executive order, which the plaintiffs say unlawfully encroaches on the constitutional right of states to manage their own election processes. Brown said the order violates “fundamental principles of federalism and the separation of powers.” Washington has historically served as a “laboratory of democracy” in the U.S., often first adopting progressive voting reforms and demonstrating how states can independently set election procedures—shaping the national debate over the balance between uniform standards and states’ rights.
The core claim is that Trump’s order directs the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to create a single national list of eligible voters. The U.S. Postal Service would then be barred from delivering ballots to anyone not on that list. The lawsuit argues that the president has no constitutional authority to restrict vote-by-mail or to determine eligibility to participate in elections based on lists approved by the federal government.
The order is another step in Trump’s series of efforts to reshape the U.S. electoral system, rooted in his false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Notably, while he seeks to limit vote-by-mail for others, Trump continues to use it himself—for example, in a local Florida election last month. He said he voted by mail because “he is the president” and had a lot to do.
Attorney General Brown emphasizes that vote-by-mail is safe and lawful in Washington, which operates a well-developed system for maintaining voter rolls and conducting entirely absentee elections. Unlike most states, Washington automatically mails ballots to all registered voters. This system, rolled out gradually beginning in 2005 and finalized by law in 2011, is considered well-established thanks to reliable signature verification, secure delivery and counting procedures, as evidenced by high turnout and minimal incidents of fraud. This is not the first legal clash between the state and the Trump administration over elections. Brown previously successfully challenged another order that required proof of citizenship for voter registration. Separately, the state is engaged in a dispute with the U.S. Department of Justice over access to its voter rolls.
In the first year-plus of Trump’s second term, Washington Attorney General Nic Brown has already sued his administration 58 times, illustrating the depth and persistence of legal conflicts between a number of states and the federal government across a wide range of issues, with voting rights among the most contentious.
Based on: WA sues Trump over national voting list, vote-by-mail restrictions