A federal judge has struck down the Trump administration's policy of obtaining state voter rolls and cross-referencing them with federal immigration databases, ruling that the practice violates multiple federal laws and constitutional principles.
U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, based in Washington, D.C., issued the 78-page decision on Friday in response to a legal challenge brought by advocacy group Common Cause and individual voters. In her ruling, Sooknanan wrote that the Justice Department "cannot run roughshod over longstanding laws that were carefully crafted to protect the rights of the American people." She found that the DOJ's policy violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Privacy Act, and that it exceeded the federal government's constitutional authority over elections.
The Trump administration has mounted a nationwide effort to obtain complete, unredacted voter rolls from all 50 states, including sensitive information such as Social Security numbers and dates of birth. The Justice Department has argued the information is necessary to ensure states comply with two federal voting laws—the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act—which require states to maintain programs for accurate voter roll maintenance. The DOJ's plan involved running state voter files through the Department of Homeland Security's Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database to identify voters it claims are ineligible noncitizens and urge states to remove them.
According to a CBS News analysis, 18 states, mostly Republican-led, fully cooperated with the DOJ's request and provided their voter files. The Justice Department sued most other states to compel compliance and has lost nearly all of those cases. One state settled with the federal government. The ruling applies both to voter files the DOJ has already received and to files still under litigation.
Judge Sooknanan rejected the DOJ's legal arguments for demanding voter lists and comparing them against citizenship databases. She emphasized concerns about the accuracy of federal databases, noting that the expanded SAVE database now includes data from the Social Security Administration, which could be outdated and flag naturalized U.S. citizens as noncitizens. In her ruling, she stated: "The challenged policy represents the federal government's attempt to decide who gets to vote. But Congress has left that authority where our Constitution has always placed it: with the states."
Sooknanan also clarified what her ruling does and does not permit, writing: "Today's decision does not prevent the federal government from taking lawful steps to support states' efforts to maintain accurate voter rolls. Neither does it prevent states from maintaining their own voter rolls. And to state the obvious, the Court's decision does not pave the way for ineligible voters to vote in our elections." She added that the policy "has removed United States citizens from the voter rolls in their home states and risks disenfranchising many more."
Common Cause CEO Virginia Kase Solomón called the ruling "a victory for voters and yet another loss for the Department of Justice." A DOJ spokesperson said the agency is reviewing the decision. This ruling is the latest in a series of court setbacks for the Trump administration's voter roll efforts; more than two dozen judges have denied the DOJ's requests to compel individual states to share their voter lists. In a separate case in June, Sooknanan also ruled that the Trump administration's overhauled SAVE database was created unlawfully, though the Supreme Court temporarily paused that ruling last month.
The practical impact of these rulings on the November midterms may be limited, as federal law bars states from systematically removing voters from registration lists within 90 days of a federal election. The administration has justified its efforts by citing concerns about noncitizen voting and election fraud, though President Trump's claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election have been repeatedly disputed. Election experts say noncitizen voting and election fraud are extremely rare in the United States.
