The lawsuit alleges an executive order issued by President Joe Biden in March 2021 that directed the heads of all federal agencies to submit applications for their respective agencies to promote voter registration and participation in elections through various public touchpoints. The president issued the order as GOP-led state governments were pushing legislation to restrict voting rights after the 2020 election.

The renewed attack on the 3½-year-old executive order underscores Republicans’ plans to take a hard look at Democrats’ efforts to make voting easier before the November election, especially after the last presidential election, in which efforts to make voting easier during the pandemic became a major flashpoint.

Nine Republican attorneys general who filed the lawsuit in federal court say Biden exceeded his authority by issuing the directive, which they say also violates the U.S. Constitution and “undermines voter registration systems established by states.”

“Through Executive Order 14019,” the states argue, “President Biden attempted to transform the federal bureaucracy into a voter registration organization and to turn every interaction between a federal bureaucrat and a member of the public into an offer to register voters.”

The states also claim that the executive order was “motivated by a partisan desire to unfairly increase Democratic votes.” They claim that the executive order and its implementation caused “financial harm, procedural harm, and harm to the sovereign interests of the states” by allegedly trampling on their own “ability to regulate voter registration.”

The lawsuit names some of the various agencies that implemented the directive, including the Treasury Department, which planned to “include voter registration and participation information in its campaigns regarding direct deposits to Americans receiving Social Security, Veterans Affairs, and other federal benefits,” according to a 2021 White House fact sheet.

Other initiatives cited in the lawsuit include an initiative by the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Housing Service, which, according to its 2021 fact sheet, “will encourage the provision of unbiased information to voters through its borrowers and underwriting lenders.”

The lawsuit was filed by the following states: Montana, Kansas, Iowa, South Dakota, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Carolina.

The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree, appointed by former President Barack Obama.

CNN has reached out to the White House for comment on the lawsuit.

When the order was first announced, a Biden administration official told reporters that among federal agencies, “many of them have branches around the country with offices where people, outside the context of the pandemic, could come and seek certain services.”

“We want to make sure that we maximize the use of these types of no-appointment services and that these are places where people can also register to vote – the goal is to make it as easy as possible to register to vote and access to vote,” the official said.

Tuesday’s lawsuit is not the first legal challenge to Biden’s executive order. A separate lawsuit filed by Pennsylvania state lawmakers was dismissed by a federal judge earlier this year. Plaintiffs in that case have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to revive their lawsuit.

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