Republicans sue over 3-year-old Biden executive order on voter registration access

By Devan Cole, CNN

(CNN) — A group of Republican state attorneys general are suing the Biden administration over a federal effort to expand access to voter registration.

The lawsuit targets an executive order issued by President Joe Biden in March 2021 that directed the heads of all federal agencies to submit proposals for their respective agencies to promote voter registration and participation through various points of contact with the public. The president issued the order as GOP-led statehouses were pushing voter suppression legislation in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

The fresh attack on a three-and-a-half-year-old executive order underscores Republican plans to scrutinize ahead of the November election actions Democrats have taken to make it easier to vote, particularly after the last presidential election, in which efforts to make voting easier during the pandemic became a major flashpoint.

The nine Republican attorneys general who filed the lawsuit in federal court argue that Biden exceeded his authority when he issued the directive, which they also say violates the US Constitution and “undermines the voter registration systems set up by the States.”

“Through Executive Order 14019,” the states argue, “President Biden has sought to convert the federal bureaucracy into a voter registration organization and to turn every interaction between a federal bureaucrat and a member of the public into a voter registration pitch.”

The states also claim that the executive order was “was motivated by a partisan desire to unfairly increase the Democrat vote.” They argue that the executive order and its implementation has caused them “pocketbook injuries, procedural harms, and harms to the States’ sovereign interests” by allegedly trampling on their own “ability to regulate voter registration.”

The lawsuit points to some of the different agencies that have implemented the directive, including the Treasury Department, which had planned to “include information about registration and voter participation in its direct deposit campaigns for Americans who receive Social Security, Veterans Affairs, and other federal benefit payments,” according to a 2021 White House fact sheet.

Other initiatives mentioned in the lawsuit include one from the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Housing Service, which, according to the 2021 fact sheet, “will encourage the provision of nonpartisan voter information through its borrowers and guaranteed lenders.”

The states that brough the lawsuit are Montana, Kansas, Iowa, South Dakota, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina.

The case has been assigned to US District Judge Daniel Crabtree, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama.

CNN has reached out to the White House for comment on the lawsuit.

When the order was first announced, a Biden administration official told reporters that among federal agencies, “many of them have footprints around the country, with offices that people, outside the context of a pandemic, could walk in and seek particular services.”

“We want to make sure that we can maximize the use of that kind of walk-in service and have them be places where people can also register to vote – the goal is to make registering to vote and voting access as easy as possible,” the official said.

Tuesday’s suit is not the first legal challenge to Biden’s executive order. A separate lawsuit brought by Pennsylvania state lawmakers was thrown out by a federal judge earlier this year. The plaintiffs in that case have asked the US Supreme Court to revive their lawsuit.

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