A US federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from conditioning counterterrorism grants for local governments on compliance with new election-administration requirements.
The ruling was issued on Monday by Judge Amir H. Ali of the US District Court for the District of Columbia in a case brought by local governments in Tennessee, Texas and Ohio. The plaintiffs argued that Congress did not make the administration of elections a condition for receiving funding under the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Homeland Security Grant Program.
The Homeland Security Grant Program provides funding to state and local governments for preventing, protecting against and responding to terrorism and other security threats. The dispute followed FEMA’s decision to attach five election-related conditions to fiscal year 2026 funding under the programme.
The conditions included requirements relating to voting equipment, post-election manual audits, ballot reconciliation, voter-registration citizenship checks and citizenship verification for election workers. Jurisdictions were also required to submit plans to move away from voting systems that use barcodes or QR codes to count ballots and towards equipment that accepts hand-marked paper ballots.
The local governments also challenged a requirement for a five per cent post-election manual audit and the use of the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system to verify citizenship information in voter-registration databases and among election workers.
Under the funding arrangement challenged in court, FEMA said 20 per cent of each state’s grant allocation would be withheld until the election-related requirements were met. The plaintiffs argued that the federal government lacked statutory and constitutional authority to impose the conditions through the counterterrorism grant programme.
The lawsuit, Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee, et al. v. US Department of Homeland Security, et al., was initially filed on August 17 by Nashville, Harris County and El Paso County in Texas, and Columbus, Ohio. Dallas County and Travis County, Texas, later joined the case.
Monday’s ruling prevents the administration from conditioning the Homeland Security Grant Program funding on the challenged election-administration requirements while the litigation continues.
