The Trump administration’s efforts to obtain detailed voter data from states have hit another legal wall, this time in Maryland.
U.S. District Court Judge Stephanie Gallagher last week threw out a Justice Department lawsuit that had sought access to Maryland’s voter registration records. Gallagher, who was appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump during his first term, wrote that she “joins every court to have addressed this issue” in concluding that the unredacted voter registration file “is not a record or paper that a state must produce to the United States.”
Thursday’s dismissal in Maryland makes nine states where the Justice Department has now lost similar legal battles. The department has filed lawsuits seeking detailed voter data — which includes dates of birth, home addresses, driver’s license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers — in 30 states and the District of Columbia.
Beyond Maryland, courts have also rejected the Justice Department’s attempts in Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. In Georgia, a judge dismissed a similar lawsuit because it was filed in the wrong city, leading the government to refile the case in a different location.
In the Maryland case, the Justice Department argued that an opinion from its own legal counsel’s office gave it the right to access the voter records under federal civil rights law. Judge Gallagher was not convinced, writing: “The Court will not interpret the (Civil Rights Act) contrary to its text simply because an office of the party advancing that interpretation has adopted it.”
Federal officials have argued they need the voter data to verify that states are following federal laws governing voter registration list maintenance, even though states already have their own detailed procedures in place. In the Rhode Island case, a Justice Department attorney acknowledged the department wanted the unredacted voter roll information so it could be shared with the Department of Homeland Security to verify citizenship status.
Earlier this week, a separate federal judge ruled that the Homeland Security program used to check citizenship — known as SAVE — violated federal privacy laws and was incorrectly flagging eligible voters as noncitizens. That judge ordered the program to stop being used.
Both Democratic and some Republican officials have pushed back against the Justice Department’s demands for detailed voter information, arguing the requests run afoul of state and federal privacy protections.
However, at least 13 states have either already turned over or committed to turning over their voter registration lists to the department, according to the Brennan Center for Justice and Associated Press reporting. Those states are Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming.
