A man votes at St Andrew's church during the 2024 U.S. presidential election on Election Day in Erie, Pennsylvania, U.S., November 5, 2024. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
FILE PHOTO: A man holds a stack of U.S. passports, October 16, 2023. REUTERS/Shir Torem/File Photo

By Dietrich Knauth

NEW YORK (Reuters) -A federal judge on Friday permanently blocked part of an executive order from Republican U.S. President Donald Trump, ruling that the president cannot require voters to show passports or similar documents as proof of citizenship before voting.

Several lawsuits have challenged the president's March 25 executive order, a sweeping order aimed at overhauling federal elections, and courts had already temporarily blocked it from going into effect. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington, D.C., was the first to reach a final ruling against the executive order.

Kollar-Kotelly permanently blocked the part of the executive order that would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote. The judge had previously declined to block the part of the executive order that would bar states from counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day.

The ruling came in response to lawsuits by groups including the Democratic National Committee, the League of United Latin American Citizens and the League of Women Voters Education Fund.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the League of Women Voters in the case, said on Friday that Americans without up-to-date passports should not be required to purchase new documents in order to exercise their rights.

"While we celebrate this victory, we remain vigilant and will keep fighting to ensure every eligible voter can make their voice heard without interference or intimidation," ACLU's Sophia Lin Lakin said. "No president can sidestep the Constitution to make it harder to vote."

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The executive order had called on a non-partisan federal election body to modify a standardized national voter registration form to require a document such as a passport proving citizenship.

Kollar-Kotelly found that part of the order was illegal because the U.S. Constitution gives states, not the president, the power to oversee elections.

Trump has long questioned the U.S. electoral system and continues to falsely claim that his 2020 loss to Democratic President Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud. Trump and his Republican allies also have made baseless claims about widespread voting by non-citizens, which is illegal and rarely occurs.

(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Rosalba O'Brien)