A federal judge has dismissed a Democratic Party lawsuit claiming an executive order issued by President Donald Trump was intruding on the independence of the Federal Election Commission.
In a ruling Tuesday night, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali said the Democratic Party groups’ case was simply too speculative to justify emergency intervention from the court. The FEC had pledged to remain independent, had received no directive from the White House to change its practices and vowed to abide by the law. Without evidence undermining those promises, Ali said he was compelled to dismiss the suit.
The Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee filed the suit in February after Trump issued an executive order that sought to assert greater control over executive branch agencies that have traditionally operated with considerable independence from the White House.
Ali’s decision is a setback for Democrats as they guard against efforts by Trump to dramatically shift the nation’s election infrastructure and voting systems in ways they say are geared toward suppressing their voters’ turnout and justifying the president’s long-discredited claims of election fraud.
The ruling landed on the same day the Republican National Committee moved to participate in separate lawsuits that Democrats and voting rights groups have filed over other Trump efforts to rewrite federal election policies and force states to bend to his will. The GOP committee said it wants to defend Trump’s plans.
Ali, a Biden appointee based in Washington, has notably been vilified by Trump and his allies for one of the earliest significant rulings against Trump’s second-term agenda — blocking the mass termination of U.S. Agency for International Development contracts amid a headlong rush by Elon Musk and DOGE to dismantle the agency. His ruling resulted in one of the earliest decisions by the Supreme Court in Trump’s second term, a determination by the justices not to block Ali’s decision to require USAID to distribute billions of dollars in funding.
The Democrats’ FEC lawsuit targeted a particular provision in Trump’s executive order that says independent agencies have to obey legal opinions issued by the president or the attorney general and that executive branch employees, in their official capacities, cannot advance any legal position at odds with the president or AG’s view.
The Democratic organizations contended that Trump’s order had already caused them harm, forcing them to strategically avoid interactions with the FEC and take precautionary measures to guard against politicized decisions from the commission. But commission lawyers said the panel did not intend to accede to the White House’s view on legal matters, and lawyers for Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi said there was no plan to try to impact the FEC interpretation on federal election law.
Given those assurances, Ali said, the Democratic committees needed to “point to a concrete basis for [the] conclusion” that the FEC’s independence had been undermined or facing a looming threat of such interference.
“They have not done so here,” he concluded.
While Ali dismissed the case, he emphasized that he was not precluding authorizing relief in the future if there was evidence that the administration was leaning on the FEC or about to do so.
“This Court’s doors are open to the parties if changed circumstances show concrete action or impact on the FEC’s or its Commissioners’ independence,” the judge wrote.
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