Federal judge blocks Ohio's proof-of-citizenship rule for voter registration at BMV offices

U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. granted a preliminary injunction Tuesday in Red Wine & Blue v. LaRose, finding that Ohio's House Bill 54 likely runs afoul of the National Voter Registration Act, the 1993 federal statute that requires state motor vehicle offices to double as voter registration agencies. The ruling does not strike the law down permanently, but it stops the state from enforcing it while the underlying lawsuit proceeds.

A federal judge in Cleveland has temporarily blocked Ohio from requiring voters to produce documentary proof of citizenship when they register at Bureau of Motor Vehicles offices, ruling that the state requirement conflicts with federal law and ordering it suspended ahead of the state's Oct. 5 registration deadline for this fall's midterm elections.

The numbers

The case, filed in August 2025 by the voter-mobilization group Red Wine & Blue and the Ohio Alliance for Retired Americans, challenges a provision added to Ohio's biennial transportation budget that took effect this year. Under the law, Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles customers seeking to register to vote while applying for or renewing a driver's license had to present documentary proof of citizenship — a passport, birth certificate or naturalization papers — rather than simply attesting to their citizenship under penalty of perjury, as federal law has long allowed.

In his written order, Judge Oliver identified two separate legal problems with the Ohio scheme. First, the state had been offering the voter-registration option only to people whose driver's license applications were ultimately approved, rather than to everyone who submitted an application, which the judge said inverted the sequence Congress intended under the National Voter Registration Act's motor-voter provisions. Second, the documentary-proof requirement itself exceeds what federal law demands — a point the state's own attorneys conceded in court, according to the ruling, since a signed attestation of citizenship has long been sufficient for election officials to process an application.

The injunction covers any driver's license applicant, first-time or renewal, and explicitly protects people who were turned away without a license because they lacked the additional paperwork.

How we got here

The citizenship-documentation requirement grew out of a broader push by Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, to tighten verification of the state's voter rolls. LaRose's office ran a series of audits beginning in 2024 that identified several hundred non-citizen registrations out of Ohio's roughly eight million registered voters, a small fraction of the rolls that LaRose nonetheless cited as justification for legislative changes. Lawmakers folded the BMV documentation mandate into the state's must-pass transportation appropriations bill rather than advancing it as standalone election legislation, a maneuver plaintiffs argued was designed to limit scrutiny.

Red Wine & Blue and the Ohio Alliance for Retired Americans sued a year ago, represented by attorneys from the Elias Law Group, a firm that frequently represents Democratic-aligned clients in election litigation. The case sat for roughly a year before Tuesday's ruling, timed to arrive just as the requirement was beginning to affect voters ahead of the fall registration window.

Who is affected

Ohio's registration deadline for the November midterms is Oct. 5, and the BMV remains one of the most heavily used registration points in the state because it is bundled with routine license transactions. Voting-rights advocates had warned that residents who lacked ready access to a passport or certified birth certificate — including lower-income voters, some naturalized citizens whose documents did not match current names, and people renewing licenses without realizing new paperwork would be demanded — risked being turned away or discouraged from registering at all. With the injunction in place, BMV customers can again register with a signed citizenship attestation alone, the standard used nationally under the NVRA for more than three decades.

Reaction

LaRose said his office would appeal immediately. "We strongly disagree with that decision, and I've asked our legal team to file an immediate appeal," he said in a statement, adding that he would "vigorously defend our legal authority to safeguard our voter rolls and protect the integrity of Ohio's elections."

"Today's ruling is a win for Ohio voters and a reminder that when politicians try to put unnecessary barriers between people and the ballot box, we will fight back," said Katie Paris, founder of Red Wine & Blue, in response to the decision.

Judge Oliver, appointed to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton in 1994 and now on senior status, has drawn criticism from conservative commentators over the ruling, though his order relies chiefly on the plain text of the NVRA and on the state's own concession that attestation is legally sufficient. LaRose's office has not disputed that non-citizen registration numbers identified in its earlier audits were a small percentage of the statewide rolls.

What happens next

Ohio's appeal will go to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which could act on an expedited basis given the approaching registration deadline. Unless a higher court intervenes, the preliminary injunction remains in force through the Oct. 5 deadline and the Nov. 3 general election, meaning BMV customers can register under the pre-HB 54 attestation standard for this cycle regardless of how the appeal proceeds. The underlying lawsuit over the law's validity continues in Judge Oliver's court separately from the injunction fight, with no trial date yet set. Similar documentary-proof-of-citizenship requirements are being litigated in several other states this election cycle, and voting-rights lawyers say Tuesday's ruling will likely be cited in those cases as persuasive, if not binding, authority.