Cities and counties sue Trump administration over threats to local election administration

Media contact: Brittany Miller, brittany@publicrightsproject.org

WASHINGTON — Today, Columbus, Ohio; the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee; El Paso County, Texas; and Harris County, Texas, sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for its attempt to use public safety grants as leverage to fundamentally alter how states and local governments run elections.

The cities and counties — represented by Public Rights Project, Protect Democracy, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU and Jacobson Lawyers Group — argue that DHS’s new grant conditions would make elections more costly, difficult to administer and less reliable. The coalition also states that the conditions violate the Constitution and jeopardize public safety. For decades, these grants have helped states and local governments prevent and respond to terrorism, natural disasters and other emergencies. Now, local governments are being forced to either comply with unlawful election conditions or risk losing tens of millions of dollars of crucial funding.

“DHS is trying to use homeland security funding to dramatically reshape how local governments run elections,” said Toby Merrill, litigation director for Public Rights Project. “These new conditions would undermine the local control that has helped make our elections safe and secure for decades. We’re proud to stand with cities and counties fighting to protect their communities from this harmful federal overreach.”

The new rules would require state and local governments to:

• Transition to using hand-marked ballots instead of electronic voting systems already used in many places 
• Manually audit at least 5% of ballots, which would add significant new costs and be contrary to state law in some cases
• Use the error-prone Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system to “verify” the citizenship of every registered voter and election worker

“This is the kind of federal overreach we’ve come to expect from the Trump administration,” said Abbie Kamin, Harris County Attorney. “To threaten law enforcement and public safety funding our agencies rely on, to withhold dollars that protect our communities for a partisan power grab is not only improper, it’s dangerous. Local control of elections is embedded in our Constitution, and any attempt to upend that must be vigorously guarded against.” 

The local governments argue that these new conditions violate the Constitution’s separation of powers and the Administrative Procedure Act. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to set the terms of federal spending and provides states with the power to make rules for elections. 

“Holding cities hostage by threatening anti-terrorism funding if they don’t go along with the president’s absurd election manipulation is as dangerous as it is illegal,” said Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein. “We’re fighting back to protect public safety and election integrity. We will not be bullied by this president and his administration.”

Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia filed a similar lawsuit seeking to block the election conditions in their states. The four local governments PRP represents in this new case are located in states that didn’t participate in that lawsuit and would likely not be protected by a favorable ruling in the states’ case. 

“This lawsuit seeks to secure necessary funding that would provide equipment and training to Nashville’s first responders in handling emergency or terrorist events in our city,” said Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County’s Director of Law Tyler Yarbro. “The Trump administration wants to withhold those funds unless we implement wholly unnecessary and costly changes to our election procedures. Courts have consistently rejected the administration’s efforts to meddle in elections. We are proud to join other cities and counties across the country to ensure that our access to federal funds designated for first responders is protected.”

“Holding critical grant funding hostage to advance a false political narrative is unlawful,” said El Paso County Attorney Christina Sanchez. “It comes at the direct expense of local election offices, law enforcement agencies, and the communities they are entrusted to serve. Local election offices already face some of the toughest oversight and requirements designed to keep their operations safe and secure. Imposing additional requirements is both costly and burdensome, while our law enforcement agencies rely on this funding to purchase critical equipment that helps protect and save lives. El Paso County joins other local jurisdictions in pushing back against this dangerous overreach imposed by a rogue and politically compromised federal agency.”

Read the lawsuit here.

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