Congress strips voting rights from D.C. permanent residents
S. 2636 — A bill to prohibit individuals who are not citizens of the United States from voting in elections in the District of Columbia and to repeal the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022. · Filed by Katie Britt (R-AL) · 23 cosponsors · Introduced Jul 31, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill prohibits non-citizens from voting in District of Columbia elections and referendums, and repeals the 2022 D.C. law that had permitted permanent residents (non-citizens) to vote in local elections. The effect is to restore D.C. voting eligibility to U.S. citizens only, reversing a 2022 D.C. Council decision that had expanded the franchise to include long-term non-citizen residents.
Why we flagged it
The bill's sole operative mechanism is to restrict voting eligibility in D.C. elections to U.S. citizens, undoing a 2022 expansion of the franchise to non-citizen permanent residents. It is a straightforward, openly stated voting-rights narrowing.
What the text implies
- The bill is a federal override of D.C. home-rule authority: Congress is using its plenary power over D.C. to reverse a D.C. Council-enacted local voting law, reasserting federal control over D.C. electoral rules despite D.C.'s limited self-governance status.
- The repeal restores prior D.C. law 'as if' the 2022 Act had not been enacted, which may create ambiguity about the exact statutory baseline if prior law was itself amended or repealed between 2022 and the effective date of this bill.
The full analysis lists 3 implications of this text.
Who it affects
The bill removes voting rights from a class of residents (permanent residents and other non-citizens) who had been granted them by D.C. law.