BATON ROUGE — Louisiana's attorney general has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Election Assistance Commission after the commission barred Louisiana from implementing a state law requiring those who register to vote to provide information proving they are U.S. citizens.

The complaint, filed in federal court in western Louisiana, asks the court to declare that the commission was "getting in the way of the State's sovereign right to protect the integrity of its elections," Attorney General Liz Murrill said.

The complaint says the commission told Louisiana that the law wasn't necessary.

According to the complaint, Louisiana submitted two options to the EAC for voters to confirm their citizenship on a federal voting form. Option 1(A) asks voters to provide their unique immigration number on a federal form as part of voter registration, or to provide birth, sex and mother's maiden name if they did not know that number. Option 1(B), which the state said it provided in case the EAC determined that section of the federal form didn't provide enough space, would ask for the same information as part of an attachment to the federal form.

The EAC rejected Option 1(A) in September 2025, but told Louisiana the state could separately submit Option 1(B) for consideration. Louisiana did so, and the EAC rejected that option in January 2026.

Two commissioners approved of Louisiana's law and two others did not. The two that disapproved said "Louisiana’s Option 1(A) and 1(B) fail to meet the standard of necessity and would be at odds with Congress’s intent through passage of the National Voter Registration Act related to the federal form." They also said the new information requested under both options is different from what is currently required and "may cause confusion to voters."

Louisiana argued that the state has the constitutional authority to verify an applicant's eligibility to vote in all elections, calling the denial to adjust the federal form with Louisiana's specific instructions as "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse
of discretion, and otherwise not made in accordance with law."

The full complaint is available here.