Nevada officials announce permanent block on federal election-order provisions
A federal court has granted nearly all of a multistate coalition’s motion for summary judgment and permanently barred the federal government from enforcing challenged provisions of a presidential executive order concerning elections, Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford and Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar announced June 24.
The officials said the court ruled that the provisions at issue were unlawful. Nevada and California co-led the lawsuit challenging them.
Permanent bar follows summary-judgment ruling
The decision came at the summary-judgment stage, a procedural point at which a court decides claims without a trial when it finds the applicable legal standards have been met. The court granted the states nearly all of the relief they sought in their summary-judgment motion, according to the Nevada Attorney General’s Office.
The announcement describes a permanent bar on enforcement, rather than a temporary pause. It says the federal government may not enforce the challenged portions of the order covered by the ruling.
The Nevada officials’ announcement did not identify a full case caption or docket number in the indexed text. It also characterized the decision from the states’ perspective, so the precise scope of each part of the court’s injunction would depend on the full order.
Election administration provisions were at issue
The challenged provisions addressed voter registration, election funding and ballot counting. Ford and Aguilar said the order improperly burdened states’ authority to administer elections.
Those subjects place the dispute in core areas of state election administration: maintaining voter-registration systems, handling resources connected to election operations and counting ballots. The court’s ruling blocks enforcement of the provisions challenged by the states; it does not establish that every provision of the executive order was invalidated.
Nevada’s participation was led jointly with California in the multistate case. Ford, the state’s attorney general, and Aguilar, the secretary of state, announced the result from Carson City on June 24.
What the ruling does — and does not establish
The verified result is a court decision declaring the challenged provisions unlawful and permanently barring their enforcement. The announcement does not describe a new Nevada election procedure, a change in how the state will register voters or count ballots, or any separate implementation deadline.
It also does not identify a vote total, monetary award or funding amount. The immediate legal effect described by state officials is limited to preventing enforcement of the provisions challenged in the lawsuit.
For Nevada election officials, the case concerns the state’s asserted authority over election administration. The full court order would provide the controlling detail on the injunction’s exact reach.
Sources
- Attorney General Ford and Secretary of State Aguilar Secure Major Victory Against Unlawful Federal Election Order, Nevada Attorney General’s Office
- Meeting Information, Carson City