SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — California is again taking the Trump administration to court, challenging a new executive order aimed at overhauling the nation’s election system.
In a partnership with more than 20 other states, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit Friday arguing that President Donald Trump’s executive order affecting mail-in voting is unconstitutional. It marks California’s 66th lawsuit against the White House, according to Bonta’s office.
“Their interference, their actions are the threats to the integrity of our election system,” Bonta said.
The lawsuit follows a March 2025 attempt by Trump, in which he sought to require proof of citizenship for voting, but three federal courts blocked aspects of that order. Bonta said the new order mirrors those previous efforts.
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“This order is just as illegal as the first one,” Bonta said. “But the president seems to embrace a philosophy of if at first you don’t succeed, break the law again.”
If allowed to stand, the executive order would create a list of verified U.S. citizens eligible to vote and require the U.S. Postal Service to ensure ballots are sent only to those voters.
Trump defended the order, saying, “I think this will help a lot with elections. We’d like to have voter ID, we’d like to have proof of citizenship, and that’ll be another subject for another time.”
Legal experts say the president lacks the authority to unilaterally reshape how elections are run. Daniel Farber, a professor at UC Berkeley Law School, said election oversight is constitutionally assigned to the states.
MORE: Bay Area lawyers to challenge Trump before Supreme Court in birthright citizenship case
“There just is no constitutional power for the president to really get involved in the election process at all,” Farber said. “The framers of the Constitution clearly saw elections as a state function, and they’ve really only allowed these very limited exceptions.”
Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed U.S. elections are plagued by widespread fraud. Farber warned that federal intervention could further undermine public confidence.
“Especially given the amount of political polarization we have now, I think it would really destroy faith in elections, because, you know, you would have to trust the party in power to be doing a fair job,” he said.
The lawsuit is the latest in a broader push by the president to reshape election rules, an effort federal courts have so far largely pushed back against.
Bonta said he is not concerned the mail-in voting restrictions will take effect before California’s June 2 primary election, but he believes the administration is positioning itself ahead of the November midterm elections.
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