A federal judge in Washington permanently barred the Trump administration Friday from requiring proof of citizenship on federal voter registration forms, a change dictated in an executive order President Donald Trump signed in March.

The ruling definitively halted the effort to compel the Elections Assistance Commission, an independent body, to adopt nationwide changes to voting procedures at a time when the president has also called for requiring voter identification in elections and ending mail-in voting. For months, voting rights groups have warned that those changes, in tandem with the deployment of the National Guard to the streets of Democratic-led cities, resembled steps of a voter-suppression strategy.

In a firm 81-page opinion, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District C

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