A federal judge on Friday ruled the Department of Justice’s current effort to remove people from state voter rolls is “unlawful,” “arbitrary and capricious,” and “violates” federal privacy laws. But Judge Sparkle L. Soonanan wrote that her 78-page ruling does not prohibit the federal government from “taking lawful steps to support states’ efforts to maintain accurate voter rolls.”
Common Cause, a non-partisan advocacy group, brought the case against the DOJ months earlier. The ruling comes as about a dozen states have begun early voting for the midterm elections.
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The judge called the DOJ’s effort the “federal government’s attempt to decide who gets to vote,” and said that her ruling “does not pave the way for ineligible voters to vote in our elections.”
President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed without evidence there was widespread fraud in prior elections. He has also sought to undermine the results of the upcoming midterms, in which polls show Republicans may lose the majorities in the House and Senate.
“Sanctuary politicians can try to claim that voter fraud isn’t happening, but it’s very real and is a serious threat to our country,” the Department of Homeland Security wrote on X last month. “The Trump Administration will always protect the integrity of our election systems so that only American citizens are electing American leaders.”
To crack down on suspected fraud, Trump ordered the Department of Justice to restrict early and mail-in voting and cull ineligible voters from voter rolls, which are maintained by state officials. Common Cause and other groups sued to block that effort, saying it infringed on voters’ rights and disenfranchised eligible voters. About two dozen Republican-controlled states cooperated with the DOJ’s request to hand over their voter rolls to be compared to a federally created database of U.S. citizens.
The judge said that move both violates the state’s role in administering elections and relies on a database that is not accurate. Though the DOJ claimed it had authority to check state voter rolls under federal election laws, “nothing in those statutes” empowers the DOJ “to demand” voter rolls from states, the judge wrote.
The defendants “point to no provision” in legislation it cites “that expressly authorizes the sharing of unreacted voter rolls containing sensitive personal information with other federal agencies,” the judge wrote.
