A federal judge has ruled that a Trump administration system designed to verify voters is unlawful, dealing a fresh legal setback to the White House's election integrity initiatives.
The decision invalidates the data verification framework, which had been central to the administration's strategy for standardizing voter rolls across states.
The ruling intensifies the ongoing legal battle over federal oversight of state election processes.
It follows closely on the heels of a Supreme Court decision that allowed a lower court ruling to stand, effectively ending a tool used to protect minority voters in seven states.
That earlier decision had already signaled judicial resistance to certain federal interventions in state-level voting administration.
Compounding the tension, the U.S. Postal Service recently proposed new rules requiring states to provide detailed voter-level data for mail-in ballots in federal elections.