Washington’s new law on noncitizen voting took effect Tuesday and drew its first legal challenge from the Immigration Reform Law Institute, which says it harms the voting rights of actual citizens.

The new law applies to all city dwellers who have lived in the District more than 30 days, and allows them to cast ballots in any city contest, though they are still not supposed to vote in races for federal office. It is the most expansive noncitizen voter policy on the books anywhere in the country.

Opponents called the law “a direct attack on American self-governance.”

“This law doesn’t just give foreign citizens a voice in our country’s affairs, it gives them voting power that politicians inevitably will have to respond to. That transfer of power flies in the face of the clear right of the American people to govern themselves,” said Christopher Hajec, director of litigation at IRLI.

The lawsuit was filed in the District’s Superior Court. The plaintiffs include Stacia Hall, a failed GOP candidate for mayor in 2022, and six other city residents.

The lawsuit says allowing noncitizens to cast ballots dilutes the voting power of citizens. Unless there’s a compelling justification, it flouts the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, the challengers argue.

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Neither the District’s attorney general nor Councilmember Charles Allen, the legislation’s chief sponsor, responded to requests for comment for this story.

The measure cleared city council over the opposition of Mayor Muriel Bowser, who allowed it to become law without her signature.

It was subject to Congress’s oversight.

The House passed a resolution disapproving of the voting changes, with more than 40 Democrats joining the GOP in voting to strike the law down. But the Democrat-led Senate never acted.

Republicans on Capitol Hill have given conflicting explanations for the failure to act, with some citing complexities in the law that governs Congress’s relationship with the city and others saying the measure’s supporters bungled their timing.

The lack of action was all the more striking because Congress did vote to overturn a different piece of D.C. legislation that lowered maximum prison sentences for some serious crimes. That measure passed the House with even less support than the noncitizen voting measure, but attracted widespread bipartisan support in the Senate.

One reason for that is President Biden, who initially expressed opposition to both bills, but then reversed himself on the crime bill once it became clear it would pass the Senate.

Noncitizen voting used to be a fairly standard practice in the early days of the country, when states were far more heterogeneous in their rules on who qualified as a voter.

The practice faded over the 19th century, and by the early 20th century was effectively ended. Congress in 1996 adopted a national ban on noncitizen voting in federal contests.

But a recent push by immigrant-rights advocates to lessen distinctions between citizens and noncitizens has reignited the issue. Takoma Park, a town that sits in Maryland just across the D.C. border, has allowed the practice for several decades, and other towns in Maryland have followed suit.

San Francisco and Oakland have also adopted noncitizen voting, though those policies face legal challenges.

New York City’s attempt to allow noncitizen voting was struck down by a state court, while a policy enacted in two cities in Vermont has been upheld.

Jurisdictions that have tried noncitizen voting report relatively low interest.

In San Francisco, where noncitizens are allowed to vote in board of elections contests if they have kids who live in the city, hundreds of thousands of voters cast ballots but noncitizens account for fewer than a hundred. In 2019, just two cast ballots.

San Francisco’s policy includes illegal immigrants. In Vermont, Montpelier’s ordinance only applies to those with legal status, and it allows them to vote on every issue except for schools. Winooski, another Vermont jurisdiction, does allow voting in school elections.

The District’s policy would even encompass diplomats and other agents of foreign governments who have lived there for 30 days or more — a reality that critics said gives adversarial nations a chance to have a say in the politics of the nation’s capital.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.