April 28 - With the November midterm elections looming, federal courts have rebuffed the Justice Department's effort to compel states to hand over detailed voter registration records, handing a series of courtroom victories to Democratic-run states. The decisions mark a significant check on an unprecedented federal push to expand oversight of how states maintain voter rolls.
So far this year, judges in California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon and Rhode Island have dismissed the department's lawsuits seeking state voter lists that include sensitive elements such as partial Social Security numbers. Those rulings come as Democrats and allied advocates wage an uphill fight to reclaim control of both houses of Congress from President Donald Trump's Republicans in the November 3 midterms.
Legal challenges involving U.S. federal elections have become routine, with Democrats and voting rights groups typically contesting state laws they view as restrictive and Republicans and their allies challenging state practices they argue create vulnerabilities to fraud. President Trump has repeatedly and falsely asserted that his 2020 election defeat stemmed from fraud.
In a notable shift this election cycle, voting rights organizations increasingly find themselves opposing the federal government in court. Lis Frost, a lawyer with Elias Law Group, which has intervened on behalf of voting rights groups in the lawsuits over the data requests, said, "This year, we have the added layer of the Department of Justice being perhaps the main player in voter suppression litigation. This DOJ has taken on the mantle that was previously carried by right-wing organizations to try to argue that there are voters on the rolls that shouldn’t be there and to try to remove voters from the rolls." Frost's firm was founded by election attorney Marc Elias and commonly represents Democratic clients in litigation.
What the courts have said
Four judges who dismissed the suits - three appointed by Democratic presidents and one appointed by Mr. Trump during his first term - determined that the federal government failed to explain why it required unredacted voter data to perform oversight over state voting practices. In Michigan, however, Judge Hala Jarbou, a Trump appointee, reached a different conclusion on the Department of Justice's explanation: she said the department adequately articulated the basis for its request but found that the statutes cited by the department did not impose a duty on the state to surrender its rolls.
The U.S. Constitution vests primary authority over the administration of federal elections with the states, and several judges framed their rulings around limits on federal power. In California, U.S. District Judge David Carter wrote that the department's request exceeded congressional intent for the Civil Rights Act and related voting laws. Carter warned that the scope of the demand - covering so many states - suggested a federal effort to construct a nationwide voter database rather than to probe mismanagement by particular states. "The Department of Justice seeks to use civil rights legislation which was enacted for an entirely different purpose to amass and retain an unprecedented amount of confidential voter data," he wrote in a January 15 decision. The judge added that policy decisions with potential implications for privacy and voting rights belong to Congress - "It cannot be the product of an executive fiat." Carter was appointed by former President Bill Clinton.
Scope of the Justice Department's demand and responses
Since the prior year, the Justice Department has dispatched letters to nearly every state requesting their voter rolls and information about their procedures for removing ineligible registrants, such as deceased individuals, convicted felons and non-citizens. Justice Department attorneys say 17 states voluntarily turned over their rolls. The department has sued dozens of other states, including some led by Republicans, that did not comply with the requests.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the department's Civil Rights Division, has publicly defended the effort. In an April 19 interview on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures," Dhillon said the department had reviewed 60 million voter records and identified the names of 350,000 deceased persons and 25,000 people who lacked proof of citizenship. Dhillon did not present evidence that ballots had been cast using those names.
Political and legal context
Advocates for stricter verification say states are not doing enough to prevent fraud, a position at odds with state audits and academic studies cited by critics that find significant fraud to be rare. Opponents of the department's tactics contend the push is motivated more by the pursuit of political advantage than by concerns about election integrity. They argue that aggressive enforcement could narrow the electorate and risk disenfranchising eligible citizens, a group that tends to lean Democratic in many jurisdictions.
President Trump has called for the "nationalizing" of elections, urging Republicans to "take over" voting in a February podcast interview without detailing how such a plan would operate. Legal observers say the steps the administration has pursued toward centralizing election oversight face substantial legal hurdles.
Judges have already blocked other administration actions. Three separate federal judges have enjoined a 2025 executive order that required proof of citizenship to register to vote and restricted the counting of mail ballots; the Justice Department is appealing those injunctions. A March 2026 executive order that placed additional limits on mail-in voting has also been met with legal challenges.
Justin Levitt, a former Justice Department elections lawyer and current professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, characterized the administration's practical ability to unilaterally federalize elections as limited. "He doesn’t have the levers, he doesn’t have the switch, there is nobody he can order to federalize the elections who will listen to him," Levitt said.
Possible consequences and public perception
Even as the department loses some courtroom battles, legal analysts expect the administration may nonetheless use the litigation as a basis to cast doubt on the legitimacy of future election results should Republicans fare poorly in November. That tactic echoes the post-2020 period, when Mr. Trump leveraged more than 60 unsuccessful legal challenges into a broader narrative questioning the reliability of the vote.
David Becker, a former Justice Department election lawyer and current executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, warned about the strategic use of legal processes. "This is using the legal process, the law enforcement process to serve a propaganda role, to lead to destabilization and delegitimization of future elections like in 2026," he said.
Public opinion polling suggests the claims about non-citizen voting have found a receptive audience. A Reuters/Ipsos poll cited by parties involved in the discourse found that 46% of respondents agreed with the statement that large numbers of fraudulent ballots are cast by non-citizens; agreement was far higher among Republicans at 82%.
Privacy and disenfranchisement concerns
The prospect of a nationalized voter database has alarmed voting rights advocates who fear that cross-referencing state rolls with other datasets could lead to improper purges of eligible voters. Renata O'Donnell, senior litigation counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit that works to protect voter access, cautioned that auxiliary data sources may not reflect individuals' current citizenship status, including those who have since naturalized. "People who should lawfully be able to access the franchise are going to be disenfranchised," O'Donnell said. Her organization has intervened in several of the voter roll cases on behalf of voting rights groups.
Next steps in litigation
The Justice Department has not exhausted its legal options. It is appealing three of the recent dismissals and faces roughly 25 similar cases that remain pending. Assistant Attorney General Dhillon has signaled a willingness to elevate the dispute to the U.S. Supreme Court, where conservative justices currently constitute a 6-3 majority.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson defended the administration's position in a statement: "President Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered non-citizen voters."
Conclusion
The unfolding litigation over access to state voter rolls underscores a clash between federal enforcement priorities and states' constitutional authority to run elections. Courts so far have curtailed parts of the Justice Department's strategy, flagging statutory limits and constitutional concerns as barriers to the department's most expansive demands. But with a slate of appeals and additional suits pending, the dispute over federal access to voter data is set to remain a prominent legal and political theme through the midterms and potentially beyond.