A Vermont judge has thrown out a lawsuit backed by a national conservative group that tried to block noncitizen voting in Burlington.
Chittenden County Superior Court Judge Samuel Hoar, Jr. dismissed the case Feb. 6 with prejudice, meaning the plaintiffs will not be able to refile the case there.
Filed by the nonprofit Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections on behalf of Burlington residents Karen Rowell and Michele Morin, the lawsuit claims that allowing noncitizen voting “on matters involving the City of Burlington’s school board and education budget is unconstitutional and void,” according to the complaint filed in the civil division on June 18, 2024.
Plaintiffs in the case argued the charter amendment violates Section 42 of the Vermont Constitution, which “establishes United States citizenship as a requirement for voting on ‘freemen’ issues, which include ‘any matter that concerns the State of Vermont.’” Plaintiffs further stated that while Section 42 “may generally tolerate noncitizen voting in municipal elections, school district elections are different.”
The city filed a motion to dismiss and in a 7-page decision this month, Judge Hoar agreed to do so, pointing to a similar challenge in Montpelier in which the Vermont Supreme Court ruled the citizenship requirement applies only to statewide elections and not municipal ones.
When Burlington voters cast their ballots in school district elections, they address “distinctly local matters,” the superior court’s ruling states, and they “have no say in how the school funding scheme adopted by the legislature operates, and they are not in any meaningful sense responsible for how that system affects them in relation to non-Burlington voters and municipalities.”
In 2018, Montpelier became the first city in Vermont to allow noncitizen voting by passing a charter amendment. In 2020, Winooski followed suit.
Both efforts were challenged in 2021 by the national and state branches of the Republican Party with one member calling it a “far-left assault on election integrity” — but both lawsuits were eventually thrown out.
Winooski was sued again by the Vermont Republican Party and its national counterpart in March 2023 but that case was also thrown out.
Brady Toensing, a former vice chair of the state GOP who also served in the Department of Justice during President Donald Trump’s first term and represented the parties in all these lawsuits, said in an email they plan to appeal the decision.
In the lawsuit, Toensing argued that because school budget issues have statewide implications, only U.S. citizens should be allowed to weigh in on them.
Similar to prior decisions on the matter, Judge Hoar’s motion to dismiss states that noncitizens may vote in local elections as Burlington’s school budgets are created by locally-elected school board officials and ratified through city elections.
City officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
The decision affords people who are legal residents but not U.S. citizens — such as, permanent residents with Green Cards, residents with eligible work permits or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients — the right to vote in local government and school elections.
Local voters approved Burlington’s charter change in 2023, and the Vermont Legislature subsequently overrode a veto by Republican Gov. Phil Scott to enact it months later. Scott said then that he preferred a statewide approach.
While noncitizen voting is not allowed in federal elections, the District of Columbia and some municipalities in California and Maryland allow noncitizens to vote in local elections, according to Ballotpedia, which also notes that eight states approved ballot measures to prohibit noncitizen voting in 2024.
Correction: Due to an editing error, one reference misstated which court issued the Burlington ruling.
