A federal judge has dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit that sought to force New Hampshire to hand over its detailed voter registration records, delivering yet another courtroom setback to the Trump administration’s push to collect comprehensive voter data from states across the country.
U.S. District Judge Joseph LaPlante issued the ruling Monday, finding that the Justice Department’s request failed to satisfy a provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 that governs federal election records. The judge also determined that the department did not adequately allege any violation of the Help America Vote Act of 2002, the law that sets standards for state voting systems and voter registration databases.
The ruling blocked what LaPlante described as “allowing the Attorney General unrestricted access to New Hampshire’s (voter list) to conduct a line-by-line audit to assess a ‘possible’ violation of a federal statute.” LaPlante was appointed to the bench by former President George W. Bush.
New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan, a Republican, praised the decision. “I am committed to protecting the private information of New Hampshire voters to the fullest extent required by law,” Scanlan said in a written statement.
With this dismissal, New Hampshire becomes the tenth state in which the Justice Department has failed in court on similar efforts. The department has pursued lawsuits to obtain detailed voter data — which includes birth dates, home addresses, driver’s license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers — from 30 states and the District of Columbia.
Beyond New Hampshire, courts have also rejected the department’s attempts in Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. In Georgia, a judge dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit on the grounds that it was filed in the wrong city, leading the government to refile the case in a different location.
Federal officials have argued that access to the voter records is necessary to verify that states are following federal laws regarding the upkeep of voter registration lists — even though states already maintain their own detailed procedures for doing so. In the Rhode Island case, a Justice Department attorney acknowledged that the department wanted unredacted voter roll data so it could be shared with the Department of Homeland Security to verify citizenship status.
Officials from both the Democratic and Republican parties have raised objections to the Justice Department’s demands, arguing that the requests violate both state and federal privacy protections.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice and Associated Press reporting, at least 13 states have already provided or agreed to provide their voter registration lists to the department: Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming.
