A federal judge ruled on September 28, 2026, that the Trump administration cannot condition federal grants intended for anti-terrorism efforts on states and local governments adopting new voting restrictions. U.S. District Judge Amir Ali determined that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) likely violated federal law by linking hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to changes in election administration.
The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by Nashville and Davidson County in Tennessee, Harris and El Paso Counties in Texas, and Columbus, Ohio, against the Trump administration last month. In June, FEMA announced it would withhold 20% of DHS's $1 billion Homeland Security Grant Program unless states complied with new voting measures proposed by the Trump administration.
To qualify for the grants, states would have been required to run their voter registration records through a DHS immigration database, which the administration sought to use as a means to influence voter eligibility. Additionally, states would have needed to stop using certain election equipment, change ballot and audit procedures, and implement other costly modifications.
Judge Ali stated that FEMA lacked the authority to impose unfunded reforms on states in exchange for grants. He noted that the conditions imposed by FEMA exceeded what Congress authorized, as they addressed routine election administration rather than the types of threats the funding was intended to mitigate.
This ruling follows a recent Supreme Court decision that allowed the Trump administration to resume using the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database to verify voter citizenship. The Supreme Court's decision temporarily set aside a lower court ruling that had found the use of SAVE violated privacy rights and threatened voting rights. Judge Ali's ruling is also significant for a group of 25 states and Washington, D.C., which separately sued the Trump administration over the grant conditions.