After a string of federal court losses that has whittled away at the U.S. Supreme Court’s guarantee of “meaningful review” for Guantanamo Bay detainees, a D.C. federal district judge has issued a resounding win on access to counsel, rebuffing an attempt by the government to replace court rules with its own significantly more restrictive proposal.

Citing the “litany” of Supreme Court rulings that established detainees’ hard-fought access to the courts, Judge Royce C. Lamberth, the chief judge for the D.C. district court, said the court was “nonplussed as to why the counsel-access issue is being re-litigated at all,” and scolded the administration for confusing “the roles of the jailer and the judiciary in our constitutional separation-of-powers scheme.” Lamberth writes:

It is clear that the Government had no legal authority to unilaterally impose a new counsel-access regime, let alone one that would render detainees’ access to counsel illusory.

Because it is emphatically the duty of the Courts to assure access to habeas relief, and because “petitioners’ access to attorneys is not a matter of Government discretion,” the Government’s MOU is null ab initio. If the Court here were to allow the Executive to substitute its MOU for the Protective Order, regardless of whether it provides “essentially the same” counsel-access provisions or not, the Court would be abdicating its great responsibility to guarantee that its doors remain open to these detainees.

If the separation-of-powers means anything, it is that this country is not one ruled by Executive fiat. Such blanket, unreviewable power over counsel-access by the Executive does not comport with our constitutional system of government. Therefore, it is the opinion of this Court that the Protective Order continues to govern detainee-counsel access for the purpose of bringing habeas petitions so long as detainees can bring habeas petitions before the Court.

Under the government’s scheme, in-person and written communication between detainees and defense attorneys is significantly curtailed when lawyers don’t have a habeas corpus case pending. The government reasoned that, should clients wish to initiate a habeas petition challenging their detention, they could proceed on their own, “send letters to the Court,” or submit “the form that the Government makes available” — an assertion that Lamberth called “preposterous.”

“The Court does not see how these petitioners, who speak no English, have no legal training, and who cannot be expected to remain up to date with new legal and political developments can have the requisite tools to bring habeas petitions without access to counsel,” Lamberth wrote.

Should this ruling be subject to appeal, the odds for detainees are grim – the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has sided with the government in 11 out of the last 12 cases. The Supreme Court, meanwhile, has stayed entirely out of the fray since the summer of 2010, declining to review a single Guantanamo appeal during its last two terms.

GOP efforts to purge the voter rolls in Florida and Colorado have so far come up with almost no noncitzens, NPR reports. The two states fought to gain access to an immigration database compiled by the Department of Homeland Security to compare against their voter rolls. Armed with this federal database, Florida claims the purge has identified “several” noncitizens out of 2,600 names, while Colorado admits they have “no confirmed noncitizens”:

Colorado, which along with Florida was initially denied access to the database, says that an automated check of more than 1,400 names has flagged 177 people as possible noncitizens. Colorado has asked the Department of Homeland Security, which maintains the database, to assign a person to verify their status.

“For the moment, we have no confirmed noncitizens, but I would expect that most of those people would come back as noncitizens,” says Andrew Cole, a spokesman for Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler.

Colorado’s Secretary of State sent letters to 4,000 voters asking them to prove their citizenship. 482 people have provided proof, while 1,000 letters were returned because of wrong addresses.

The database is being used to check for legal residents possessing green cards or work visas, who are prohibited from voting. Nearly 60 percent of Florida’s list of suspected noncitizens are Latinos. The state’s past voter purge lists have been riddled with errors, including hundreds of citizens who were given just 30 days to prove their citizenship or be barred from voting.

Both states are planning new purges before November. Voter purges are currently ongoing dozen states, all of which have Republican election officials.