Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche took his 20th straight court loss in President Donald Trump’s bid to force states to turn over voter data before the midterm elections after a Republican-appointed federal judge threw out the case and barred him from refiling.
U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer, appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, dismissed the case with prejudice — meaning Blanche cannot bring the same claims back to that court.
The ruling was dated Monday but emerged in the news Tuesday — the same day the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 12-10 to advance Blanche’s nomination as permanent attorney general to the full Senate, according to CNBC.
Blanche had to formally rescind a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” — a program that could have compensated allies of Trump, including Jan. 6 rioters — to win over two Republican holdouts after the vote nearly stalled, NPR reported.
Legal journalist Adam Klasfeld noted on X that the Colorado ruling emerged the same day Blanche cleared the committee.
Blanche has not won a single one of these cases, Democracy Docket noted.
The Justice Department’s demand letter sent to Colorado in December 2025 was the first problem Brimmer identified — it stated no basis or purpose for seeking the state’s private voter data, only describing itself as a follow-up to earlier correspondence, the court order said.
Second, Brimmer ruled that Colorado’s voter list is not the kind of record the Civil Rights Act of 1960 requires states to produce.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Lawless reached the same conclusion three days earlier when she dismissed the department’s Illinois lawsuit — the 19th loss — with prejudice, ruling that the Illinois State Board of Elections created its voter list and therefore never received it from an outside source, Democracy Docket reported.
“The Board possesses the list by its own creation,” Lawless wrote. “The Board did not come into its possession.”
Brimmer also noted a legal conflict in the department’s position. Reading the Civil Rights Act the way the Justice Department proposed would make it a crime for states to update their voter lists — something federal law requires them to do constantly, the court order said.
“Congress did not confer a general auditing power to the DOJ over state election officials,” Lawless wrote.
Twelve of the 20 rulings against the Justice Department have come from judges appointed by Republican presidents, according to Democracy Docket. Eight of those were appointed by Trump himself.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D-CO), a defendant in the case, responded to the ruling in a statement.
“Trump and his DOJ are attacking elections and democracy,” Griswold said. “We will not let them win. Today’s victory affirms that Trump’s DOJ has no right to Coloradans’ sensitive voter information. I will always defend our elections from unlawful federal interference.”
Blanche still needs 50 Senate floor votes to be confirmed. He can only afford to lose two Republican votes, given the party’s 53-47 majority and the extended medical absence of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), CNBC reported.
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