WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Friday struck down a Justice Department initiative to collect unredacted state voter lists and cross-reference them with immigration records, ruling that the administration exceeded its statutory authority and threatened the rights of eligible voters.
In a 78-page decision, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan sided with the watchdog organization Common Cause and individual voters who challenged the nationwide review. Sooknanan wrote that the federal government cannot run roughshod over laws crafted to safeguard citizens, noting that the U.S. Constitution and Congress leave election administration and voter registration maintenance to the states.
“The challenged policy represents the federal government’s attempt to decide who gets to vote,” Sooknanan wrote, finding that the department lacked statutory authority to direct state voter purges.
Flawed Databases and Privacy Concerns
The Justice Department launched the initiative following directives from President Donald Trump to investigate noncitizen voting ahead of the November midterm elections, despite numerous studies demonstrating that noncitizen voting and voter fraud remain extremely rare. Federal officials sought detailed voter files from nearly every state, asking for personal data such as residential addresses, birth dates and parts of Social Security numbers.
The department sought to cross-examine those records against the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, known as SAVE. However, civil rights advocates and the plaintiffs argued that the immigration database is often outdated and produces false matches, particularly for naturalized citizens.
Sooknanan agreed with those concerns, writing that the agency failed to weigh the likelihood that relying on questionable citizenship records would prompt officials to pressure states to eliminate qualified Americans from registration rolls. The judge noted that the policy had already led to at least two eligible citizens being improperly dropped from their local voter lists.
The ruling determined that the program violated both the Administrative Procedure Act and the Privacy Act. Sooknanan also rejected the department’s claims that the 1960 Civil Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act granted federal officials sweeping investigative powers to audit state voter rolls.
Widespread Pushback and Next Steps
While roughly 18 states, mostly led by Republicans, handed over voter files to federal authorities, most states refused to cooperate. The Justice Department filed lawsuits against 30 states and the District of Columbia to compel them to comply, but federal judges dismissed at least 26 of those cases, according to reports from CBS News and CNN.
Friday’s ruling covers both the registration data the Justice Department has gathered so far and the files it has sought through pending litigation.
Virginia Kase Solomón, president and chief executive of Common Cause, hailed the ruling as a crucial victory for the electorate, calling it “time the Trump administration stop these desperate attempts to seize voters’ private data and take control of our elections.”
The American Civil Liberties Union also welcomed the outcome. Ming Cheung, an attorney with the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, stated that the decision shows the federal apparatus cannot be used to sow disorder in state-run elections.
The Justice Department said it is reviewing the decision. The administration could appeal the ruling, though federal statutory rules prohibit systemic voter registration purges within 90 days of an election, which may constrain any practical effects before voters cast ballots on Nov. 3.
