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A coalition of civil rights groups sued the Trump administration on Thursday, saying that a new executive order to limit mail-in voting is unconstitutional.

The order, which Trump signed on Tuesday, instructs the federal government to come up with a list of eligible citizens who can vote in each state. It also instructs the US Postal Service to only transmit mail-in ballots to people on that list.

“In effect, the Order seeks to interpose a federal screening regime between voters and the ballot box by empowering a federal mail carrier to withhold those voters’ ballots,” says the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts.

“The Constitution forbids this attempted usurpation of power. The President’s role is to execute the laws enacted by Congress–not to create new ones. Because the Executive Order exceeds the President’s constitutional and statutory authority and intrudes upon powers reserved to Congress and the States, it is unlawful and must be set aside.”

Article I, section 4 of the constitution says that states have control over how elections are run, and authorizes Congress to pass laws for federal contests. The constitution gives the president no power over elections.

“We understand this order to be an illegal and unconstitutional attempt by the President to seize control of processes that are basically run by the states,” said Davin Rosborough, deputy director of the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, and a lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the suit. “It’s a recipe for chaos and ultimately disenfranchisement.”

The executive order violates the separation of powers outlined in the constitution as well as laws that require neutral treatment of the mail, the lawsuit says. The executive order also runs afoul of a provision in the Voting Rights Act that prohibits government officials from blocking qualified voters from casting a ballot, and the Privacy Act, a 1974 law that sets certain restrictions on how the government can go about collecting information on Americans.

The executive order comes as the Trump administration has escalated efforts to undermine faith in the US election system ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

The justice department has put pressure on states to turn over their voter rolls and sued dozens of them to try to force them to do so. They have not won any of those suits so far and lost three of them.

The FBI also raided the election office in Fulton county, Georgia, and seized ballots related to the 2020 election. An unsealed search warrant affidavit reveals that the FBI’s basis for getting the warrant was debunked conspiracy theories. The justice department has also subpoenaed records related to a widely criticized review of the 2020 election in Maricopa county, Arizona. The audit confirmed Joe Biden’s victory in the county.

The 30 March executive order marked the second time Trump has tried to unilaterally change voting laws since taking office. Last year, he signed an executive order seeking to impose proof of citizenship requirements and to punish states that allowed ballots to be counted if they arrived after election day, regardless of when they were mailed. That order has been nearly entirely blocked.

“Put simply, our Constitution does not allow the President to impose unilateral changes to federal election procedures,” US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote in a ruling blocking those provisions last year.

The plaintiffs in the case include the national and Massachusetts chapters of the League of Women Voters, as well as advocacy groups for Americans living abroad. OCA – Asian Pacific American Advocates and the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority are also plaintiffs. They are represented by a slew of civil rights and voting organizations, including the ACLU, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Brennan Center for Justice, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice – AAJC.