LOS ANGELES (KEYT) – On Thursday, a federal judge dismissed the U.S. Department of Justice's lawsuit seeking access to Californian's private voter information.
"The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) seeks an unprecedented amount of personal information related to California voters from California’s unredacted voting rolls. The requested information includes the names, social security numbers, home addresses, voting history and other sensitive information of nearly 23 million Californians," wrote Federal district Judge David O. Carter in Thursday's decision to dismiss the federal government's request. "The government's request is unprecedented and illegal."
The U.S. Constitution states in Article I, Section 4 that decisions regarding, "the times, places, and manner of holding Elections" are delegated to Congress and managed by each state.
The Section does not mention any executive branch position, office, or department.
"State run elections mean that voters recognize their neighbors who staff polling stations, trust their Secretaries of State—whom they voted for—to keep their personally identifying information safe, and believe that they will not be targeted because of what they look like or who they vote for," explained Judge Carter in Thursday's dismissal. "The DOJ's request for the sensitive information of Californians stands to have a chilling effect on American citizens like political minority groups and working-class immigrants who may consider not registering to vote or skip casting a ballot because they are worried about how their information will be used."
Federal law does require states to maintain accurate voter rolls and allows people in most states to register to vote at their respective departments of motor vehicles.
"[T]he right to vote was won through generations of sacrifices from marginalized communities the American political system devalued, but who were determined to make the promise of democracy real," shared Judge Carter. "The pieces of legislation at issue in this litigation were not passed as an unrestricted means for the Executive to collect highly sensitive information about the American people. It is not for the Executive, or even this Court to authorize the use of civil rights legislation as a tool to forsake the privacy rights of millions of Americans. That power belongs solely to Congress."
On July 10, 2025, the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division demanded that California Secretary of State Shirley Weber turn over an electronic, unredacted copy of the state's voter registration list within 14 days citing the need to ensure compliance with the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.
"[T]he Attorney General is uniquely charged by Congress with the enforcement of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which were designed by Congress to ensure that states have proper and effective voter registration and voter list maintenance programs," argued the Justice Department in a press release about the nationwide lawsuits seeking voter information. "The Attorney General also has the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (CRA) at her disposal to demand the production, inspection, and analysis of the statewide voter registration lists."
On July 22, 2025, Secretary of State Weber responded that she would identify the requested information and provide it within 90 days to which the Department of Justice stated on July 29, was "not acceptable" noted Thursday's dismissal.
On Aug. 8, Secretary Weber made California's voter registration list available for inspection at her office in Sacramento with some private information, including driver's license numbers and social security numbers, redacted citing the need to comply with state and federal privacy laws.
The Department of Justice renewed its call for a full, unredacted voter registration list on Aug. 13 within seven days and threatened legal action detailed Thursday's dismissal.
In response letters sent on Aug. 21, Aug. 29, and Sep. 12, Secretary of State Weber shared that the the redacted voter information was still available for review in Sacramento, provided a full list of election officials responsible for maintaining the list, and noted that requests for identical information from multiple other states indicated that the federal law enforcement agency's request was not made in good faith noted Thursday's dismissal.
"These nationwide efforts point at a larger pattern than the DOJ’s stated purpose—one that involves collecting sensitive, personally identifying information of nearly every voter in America on an unprecedented scale and then utilizing that information in a completely different context than what the information was provided for," noted Judge Carter.
On Sep. 25, 2025, the Department of Justice sued the state of California for access to unredacted statewide voter information and oral arguments began in the case on Dec. 4, 2025.
"Accurate voter rolls are essential to ensuring that American citizens’ votes count only once, and only with other eligible voters," stated Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. "The Justice Department is committed to safeguarding fair and free elections, and will hold states accountable when they refuse to respect our federal elections laws."
Since May, the Department of Justice has requested voter information from at least 44 states and Washington D.C. according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
While ten states have provided full statewide voter registration lists, 23 states and Washington D.C. have not.
The image below, courtesy of the Brennan Center for Justice, breaks down state compliance with the Department of Justice's changes to federal elections. States shaded in yellow are being sued for not turning over voter information, states in green have not provided voter registrations, states in blue have only provided publicly available voter lists, and states in red have provided full voter registration information.
North Dakota is in orange because it has received a request from the Justice Department to schedule a meeting about sharing its voter registration information.
"This Department of Justice has now sued 23 states for failing to provide voter roll data and will continue filing lawsuits to protect American elections," stated U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi in a press release earlier this month. "Accurate voter rolls are the foundation of election integrity, and any state that fails to meet this basic obligation of transparency can expect to see us in court."
In October, a class action lawsuit, League of Women Voters v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, filed in federal court in Washington D.C. sought to halt the requests for voter information as well as the use of an existing federal database to double check state's voter registrations.
The database, known as the Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system, is a decades-old tool for state and federal agencies to verify citizenship status for people looking to access government programs or licenses.
The League of Women Voters suit alleged that the recent demands for state voter rolls was intended to create a federal database of all registered voters nationwide.
According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, election officials in compliant states have already used the database to check the status of more than 33 million voters.
Several states established new agreements with the federal government to expand the use of the SAVE database or announced its use to purge voter rolls, and the Department of Homeland Security made millions of dollars in election security funding for states dependent on the use of the database and compliance with submitting state information to the federal government.
"We encourage states with questions to work with their state election offices for basic implementation requirements," shared the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which manages the election security grant program. "If any state is not found to be compliant, we reserve the right to withhold funding or terminate the grants."
Changes made last year to the conditions for states to access the election security funding also included the removal of language that prohibited the use of the federal funds, "to suppress voter registration or turnout".
The election policy changes were met with a broad array of responses by state authorities.
"Where's that data going? And at the end of the day, is it stored? What are they going to do with it? Who has access? Is it shared?" pondered Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson. "I don't want to do something that I don't necessarily have the ability to do without legislative authority. So we just want to be very clear on that before we move forward."
Other states chose to not accept the new conditions for the grants.
"The Department of Homeland Security is trying to back-door changes to our election laws," stated Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows after denying about $130,000 in election security funding last year. "DHS [Department of Homeland Security] can't require us to use that system."
Judge Carter's dismissal was the first regarding the Department of Justice's lawsuits seeking unredacted voter information and the federal jurist admitted during court earlier proceedings he expected a dismissal to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"The taking of democracy does not occur in one fell swoop; it is chipped away piece-by-piece until there is nothing left. The case before the Court is one of these cuts that imperils all Americans," concluded Judge Carter in Thursday's dismissal. "The Department of Justice seeks to use civil rights legislation which was enacted for an entirely different purpose to amass and retain an unprecedented amount of confidential voter data. This effort goes far beyond what Congress intended when it passed the underlying legislation. The centralization of this information by the federal government would have a chilling effect on voter registration which would inevitably lead to decreasing voter turnout as voters fear that their information is being used for some inappropriate or unlawful purpose. This risk threatens the right to vote which is the cornerstone of American democracy."
Federal Judge dismisses DOJ demand for Californian’s private voter data calling it ‘unprecedented and illegal’ News Channel 3-12.
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