A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging a law in Washington, D.C., that allows noncitizens to vote in local but not federal elections.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, saying that the seven voters who brought the lawsuit “failed to establish the injury-in-fact element of standing.”

“Plaintiffs have not alleged that they have personally been subjected to any sort of disadvantage as individual voters by virtue of the fact that noncitizens are permitted to vote, too,” the opinion said.

“They may object as a matter of policy to the fact that immigrants get to vote at all, but their votes will not receive less weight or be treated differently than noncitizens’ votes; they are not losing representation in any legislative body; nor have citizens as a group been discriminatorily gerrymandered, ‘packed,’ or ‘cracked’ to divide, concentrate, or devalue their votes. At bottom, they are simply raising a generalized grievance which is insufficient to confer standing,” the filing continued.

The seven D.C. residents who brought the lawsuit argued the law, which was passed in 2022 but goes into effect with the 2024 elections, violated the 5th Amendment to the Constitution and the “constitutional right of citizen self-government.” Voting in federal elections is reserved for U.S. citizens.

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House Republicans had attempted to block the law, which, like all Washington laws, is subject to congressional review, in early 2023, but the measure was not taken up by the Senate before the 30-day deadline passed.

New York City also approved noncitizens voting in local elections but saw its local legislation blocked by a New York appeals court earlier this year. The court in the Empire State found the law, allowing legal residents and green card holders to vote in municipal elections, violated the state constitution.