Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump's efforts to enact the agenda on which he ran – and won – have faced seemingly innumerable legal challenges from the left.

As The Hill reports, however, a federal judge -- a Biden appointee no less -- rejected a challenge from Democratic Party officials who claimed that a Trump executive order unlawfully interfered with the independence of the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Trump order spurs lawsuit

According to Fox News, it was on Tuesday that the lawsuit filed by the Democratic National Committee was thrown out after a judge disagreed with its contention that a Trump order signed earlier this year placed the FEC's autonomy in jeopardy.

At issue specifically was Trump's Feb. 18 order titled, “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies.” which had a stated purpose of improving “the administration of the executive branch and to increase regulatory officials' accountability to the American people.”

To that end, the order added, “it shall be the policy of the executive branch to ensure Presidential supervision and control of the entire executive branch,” with the FEC falling under its umbrella.

The order further stated that the FEC was among the federal agencies that had exercised “substantially executive authority without sufficient accountability to the President, and through him, to the American people.”

Democrats denied

Unfortunately for Democrats, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali ruled that the political committees who filed suit did not provide sufficient proof of risk to the FEC's independence to prevail and receive the relief sought.

The plaintiffs contended that Trump's order threatened to end what they described as a post-Watergate consensus requiring neutral enforcement of federal campaign finance laws, also suggesting that to leave such judgments to a “single partisan political figure -- the President of the United States” would contravene that principle.

That assessment of risk was undermined when legal counsel for the FEC told the court that it did not plan to accept directives from the White House that would interfere with its independent judgment and also when the administration also represented to the court that no directives of that nature had been issued, and both factors appeared to weigh heavily on Judge Ali.

He wrote, “On this record -- lacking any specific allegations that the challenged section has been or will be applied to the FEC or its Commissioners, in accord with the representations of counsel -- the Court grants the defendants' motions to dismiss for lack of a concrete and imminent injury sufficient to establish standing and ripeness.”

In Ali's estimation, the Democrats were required to bring forth strong evidence that Trump's order was specifically targeting the FEC or proof that “concrete steps” had been taken to influence commissioners in their work, something the judge said they did not do.

Not necessarily the end

While Judge Ali dismissed the Democrats' complaint, he did so without prejudice, allowing plaintiffs the option of bringing the claims again at some point down the road.

Ali noted, “This Court's doors are open to the parties if changed circumstances show concrete action or impact on the FEC's or its Commissioners' independence.”

He went on, “Absent such allegations, however, the Court must dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction and therefore does so,” and while the Biden appointee may have personally wanted the Democrats to prevail, the result represents an increasingly rare instance in which a judge's own politics did not infect the outcome from the bench.