Following a lawsuit filed by Nashville and several local governments in Texas and Ohio, a federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from placing conditions on counterterrorism grant funds around whether state and local governments install certain election administration measures.
U.S. District Judge Amir Ali’s decision stemmed from a lawsuit first filed Aug. 17 in the Washington District Court by a group of local governments including Nashville. El Paso County and Harris County in Texas, the latter of which includes Houston, and the city of Columbus, Ohio, were the other plaintiffs.
This is the latest in a string of federal legal victories involving Nashville since President Donald Trump began his second term in office, and the first
lawsuit pitting the city against the Trump administration under Tyler Yarbro, who was appointed the city’s new director of law earlier this summer. Her predecessor, Wally Dietz, retired in July after several legal clashes with the federal government, including similar suits involving Trump administration cuts to congressionally appropriated grant funds for transit, public health and homelessness.
“Nashville knows how to run secure elections, and we don’t need Washington indirectly dictating the terms of our election policies by withholding the public safety funding our residents depend on,” Yarbro said in a statement. “Today’s ruling demonstrates the necessity of the checks and balances the Trump administration is actively trying to eliminate.”
Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced it would withhold 20% of funding under grant programs meant to prepare local and state governments to respond to terrorist attacks and other threats until those recipients adopted a series of election reforms.
According to the original suit, those conditions touched on nearly every aspect of the election process: voting equipment and the means by which voters cast their ballots, post-election audits, ballot reconciliation, voter-roll citizenship checks and election worker citizenship checks.
The lawsuit argued the Federal Emergency Management Agency has no authority to impose those conditions, and Ali agreed.
“Congress did not authorize the grant program to be used for the sort of election administration reforms FEMA demands here — changes that, whether sound or not as a matter of policy, are not advanced to prepare for or respond to ‘acts of terrorism,’” Ali wrote in his ruling.
Austin Hornbostel is the Metro reporter for The Tennessean. Have a question about local government you want an answer to? Reach him at ahornbostel@tennessean.com.
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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville lawsuit blocks Trump election rules tied to security grants
