Judge limits a small part of a court order blocking Trump’s election overhaul as lawsuits continue

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Friday modified part of a previous ruling that blocked much of President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive order seeking to overhaul elections in the U.S.

The minor change affects just one aspect of a preliminary injunction that U.S. District Court Judge Denise J. Casper granted on June 13 in a case filed by Democratic state attorneys general. The judge said Friday that the part of Trump’s order directing certain federal agencies to assess people’s U.S. citizenship when they ask for voter registration forms will now only be blocked in the 19 states that filed the lawsuit.

Election law experts said the modification will have little, if any, practical effect because a judge in a different lawsuit filed against the executive order also blocked the federal agencies from obeying the mandate in all 50 states.

“If there are two partially overlapping orders, the effect of changing one of them would not change what is binding in the other,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Friday’s order follows a U.S. Supreme Court decision in an unrelated case that judges are limited in granting nationwide injunctions. Government lawyers pointed to that ruling in arguing the court needed to “narrow the scope” of the injunction in the elections case. The 19 Democratic attorneys general who filed the case told the judge they wouldn’t object to the narrower scope.

The rest of Casper’s initial preliminary injunction against other aspects of the election executive order remains intact.

In June, the judge blocked various parts of Trump’s sweeping order, including a documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement on the federal voting form and a requirement that mailed ballots be received, rather than just postmarked, by Election Day.

The government continues to fight the attorney generals’ lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Boston, and has a motion to dismiss it. The Department of Justice on Friday did not reply to multiple requests for comment.

The development comes as other lawsuits challenging Trump’s executive order on elections continue to play out. That includes the one with the other preliminary injunction, filed by Democrats and civil rights groups. It also includes another from Washington and Oregon, where voting is done almost entirely by mail ballot.

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Cassidy reported from Atlanta.