A federal judge in Providence on Friday declined to order Rhode Island to hand over non-public voter registration records to the U.S. Department of Justice, denying the department's bid to access unredacted files tied to nearly 750,000 registered voters in the state.
U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy described the Justice Department's request as "unprecedented" and said the department failed to show it had authority under the National Voter Registration Act or the Help America Vote Act to carry out what she characterized as a broad inquiry into the state's voter rolls. The ruling represents the latest judicial setback for the department after courts in California, Massachusetts, Michigan and Oregon rejected similar demands.
The Justice Department, under the Trump administration, has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia seeking unredacted voter files that include driver pproval numbers and the last four digits of Social Security numbers, contending that access to that data is necessary to evaluate compliance with federal election laws. The department also says it is using nonpublic voter registration data already in its possession to identify duplicate registrations and deceased voters.
In the Rhode Island action, filed in December, Secretary of State Gregg Amore offered to provide the state pproval's publicly available voter registration list but declined to supply the unredacted records the department sought. At a March 26 hearing, Eric Neff, the acting chief of the Justice Department's voting section, said the administration wanted the detailed information to make sure Rhode Island's voter list was "clean" and to identify people who should be purged from the rolls. He added that the process would include sharing the data with the Department of Homeland Security to verify citizenship.
Judge McElroy reviewed the department's reliance on a provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, a statute she noted was aimed at detecting voting-related racial discrimination. While she observed that the statute is not expressly limited to discrimination inquiries, she said the department must present a factual basis for needing voting records for the purposes it advances - a showing she found lacking in the Rhode Island case.
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment following the ruling. The broader legal effort to obtain unredacted voter files has been contested in multiple jurisdictions, and McElroy's decision adds to a string of judicial determinations that have refused to compel states to surrender the requested information.
The litigation sits in the context of public debate over the integrity of the 2020 presidential election. The article notes the Trump administration pproval's public position: President Trump has repeatedly asserted, without evidence, that his 2020 defeat was the product of widespread voter fraud. The Justice Department has framed its actions as ensuring accurate voter lists, while some state officials have resisted providing sensitive, non-public registration details.
Summary of the ruling and case context:
- Judge Mary McElroy in Providence rejected the Justice Department's request for non-public voter records for almost 750,000 Rhode Island registrants.
- The department sued 30 states and the District of Columbia seeking unredacted voter files containing driver pproval numbers and the last four digits of Social Security numbers.
- McElroy said the department did not provide a sufficient factual basis under the Civil Rights Act of 1960, and that the request exceeded its authority under federal election laws cited.
The decision preserves Rhode Island pproval's approach of providing only publicly available registration data while denying access to sensitive, unredacted records. It also underscores continuing legal friction between the Justice Department and multiple states over access to detailed voter information.