Washington — A federal judge on Tuesday rebuffed the Justice Department’s effort to obtain sensitive voter information from Michigan, joining a growing number of judges who have tossed out lawsuits brought by the Trump administration in its bid to secure voter registration lists from states.
Judges in Oregon and California have also rejected attempts from the Justice Department to force those states to hand over their voter rolls.
The Justice Department sought an electronic copy of Michigan’s voter registration list last July, including full names, birth dates, addresses and either driver’s license numbers or partial Social Security numbers for the state’s more than 8 million voters.
But after Michigan officials said they would only turn over its public voter registration list, which leaves out certain sensitive personal information, the Trump administration sued the state and sought a court order requiring Michigan to disclose its full voter registration list.
In a brief 23-page decision, Jarbou found that three federal laws — the Help America Vote Act, the National Voter Registration Act and the Civil Rights Act — do not allow the U.S. to obtain the voting records. She also warned that interpreting the National Voter Registration Act to require the disclosure of private information submitted for voter registration “would potentially cause the statute to impose an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote guaranteed by the First Amendment.” Jarbou, the chief judge of the U.S. district court for the Western District of Michigan, was appointed to the federal bench by President Trump in his first term.
The Justice Department has sought complete voter registration lists from nearly every state and the District of Columbia since May, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. At least 11 states have either turned over the information or said they intend to do so.
But Michigan is one of two dozen states that the Justice Department has filed lawsuits against in an attempt to gain access to their voter rolls. The Trump administration has said it needs those records to ensure states are maintaining accurate voter rolls and removing ineligible voters to prevent the opportunity for fraud in federal elections.
