The Trump administration suffered its 19th straight court defeat in its campaign to obtain state voter rolls when a federal judge dismissed a Department of Justice lawsuit demanding Illinois’ unredacted voter data. U.S. District Judge Colleen Lawless ruled that amending the complaint would be “futile” and dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be revived in district court.
Illinois had already provided the DOJ with redacted voter rolls, but the lawsuit sought sensitive identifying information, including driver’s license and Social Security numbers. The DOJ argued that the Civil Rights Act of 1960 requires states to hand over voter rolls and federal voter records that came into their possession.
Lawless rejected that reading. She stressed that the attorney general must state a “legitimate purpose” to demand voter rolls, warning that if any stated purpose sufficed, the statutory requirement “would be pointless and it would provide him with unfettered authority to demand voting records.” She also noted that the executive director of the Illinois Board of Elections created the voter rolls, writing that “an ordinary English speaker would not say that she has come into possession of something that she created, established, and maintained.”
The ruling came two days after another federal judge dismissed the DOJ’s lawsuit seeking New Jersey voter rolls, according to Democracy Docket, which tracks the litigation. The administration has now lost 19 consecutive rulings in the voter roll campaign, which voting rights groups say is part of a broader effort to build a federal voter database.
The Illinois decision is the latest in a series of election-related court losses for the administration, including an appeals court ruling that blocked an executive order creating a federal voter list and a separate ruling against an order on mail-in ballots. Administration officials have argued that access to voter rolls is needed to investigate claims of noncitizen voting, allegations that voting rights advocates say lack evidence of widespread fraud.
Voting rights advocates welcomed the decision, with one report describing the ruling as a “decisive rejection” of the administration’s attempt to obtain sensitive voter information. Democracy Docket called the loss “brutal” for the DOJ’s campaign, which has drawn challenges across states including New Jersey, Idaho, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia.
The decision is likely to be appealed, and legal observers expect the fight over voter data to continue into the fall campaign. With midterms in November, election officials in Illinois and other states say the litigation is creating uncertainty about how they must handle federal requests for voter records, and voting rights groups are urging states to resist demands that could expose voters’ personal information.
Sources: Raw Story, MSN News, Democracy Docket.
Author: USA Desk
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