Trump Gets Court to Toss Democrats’ Suit Over Election Order (1)

President Donald Trump convinced a federal district court to dismiss the Democratic National Committee’s suit alleging that an executive order would end the bipartisan nature of the Federal Election Commission.

The DNC didn’t demonstrate that it suffered an injury that gave it standing to sue, Judge Amir J. Ali of the US District Court for the District of Columbia said in a Tuesday opinion dismissing the suit.

The court also dismissed the DNC’s claim for a declaration that the Federal Election Campaign Act, which established the FEC, is constitutional. Trump’s representation to the court that FECA is constitutional showed that no live dispute exists on that issue, Ali said.

The DNC, as well as the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, sued Feb. 28, alleging that Trump’s executive order “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies,” would illegally allow for only the president or the attorney general to interpret FECA instead of the bipartisan members of the FEC.

The DNC sought a declaration that FECA’s provisions insulating the FEC from partisan control are constitutional, and an injunction to halt application of the executive order to the extent it related to the FEC and its commissioners.

Trump argued for dismissal of the claim seeking declaratory relief by relinquishing any challenge to the FECA’s constitutionality. Since the DNC and the committees accepted that no live dispute existed on this issue, this claim must be dismissed, the court said.

And the court dismissed the claims seeking injunctive relief because the “possibility that the President and Attorney General would take the extraordinary step of issuing a directive to the FEC or its Commissioners purporting to bind their interpretation of FECA is not sufficiently concrete and imminent to create Article III injury,” the court said.

The court couldn’t conclude from the executive order’s text that “this type of extraordinary step” from Trump was impending, the opinion said.

The DNC and the committees argued that the executive order harms them now, because it has a chilling effect that prevents them from interacting with the FEC as they normally would.

But the executive order doesn’t presently or prospectively subject the plaintiffs to any regulations, proscriptions, or compulsions, the court said.

And the plaintiffs didn’t allege any concrete basis to infer that the executive order targets the FEC, the court said.

Elias Law Group LLP represented the DNC.

The case is Democratic Nat’l Comm. v. Trump, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-00587, 6/3/25.