The state government of Michigan was within its rights to refuse a request from the Trump administration to hand over personal information from state voter rolls, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.
In a 23-page opinion, Judge Hala Y. Jarbou of the Federal District Court for the Western District of Michigan rejected the administration’s arguments that it was entitled to know Michigan voters’ personal information to “prevent the inclusion of ineligible voters” and to combat what it called “voter fraud.” Judge Jarbou, who was appointed to the bench by President Trump during his first term, dismissed the administration’s lawsuit.
The opinion in Michigan follows two others — in Oregon and California — in which federal judges have ruled that the Justice Department is not entitled to obtain voter rolls with private voter information, including driver’s license numbers and Social Security numbers. Phone numbers, party registrations, email addresses and voter participation histories have also been requested by the Justice Department, according to one of the rulings.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department declined to comment.
The decisions offer an early indication of how the Justice Department’s nationwide quest to essentially establish a national voting database before the November midterm elections may be running into significant headwinds from the judiciary.
While the tone of Judge Jarbou’s ruling was restrained, the other two judges used their opinions to issue explicit warnings that, in their view, the Trump administration could not be trusted, and its efforts to centralize the electoral process pose a serious risk. One called the effort to obtain personal voter information from the states “unprecedented” and “illegal.” The other expressed concerns that the information would be misused by the administration for immigration enforcement, which could lead to “an erosion of voting rights and voter participation.”
For years, Mr. Trump has claimed without evidence that elections in the United States are “rigged,” culminating in his effort to subvert his loss in the 2020 election. In the years since, Mr. Trump and his allies have continued to make false accusations that the 2020 election was fraudulent, and the president has recently pushed for investigations and criminal prosecutions.
Beginning last summer, officials at the Justice Department started requesting complete, unredacted voter rolls from states. Officials from the department have said they have now asked for the files of every state. So far, roughly 11 states have complied or said they would comply with the requests, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a law and policy organization at the New York University School of Law.
But many states have refused. In response, the Justice Department has sued more than 20 states, almost all of which have Democratic governors. Many of those lawsuits are ongoing.
Under the Constitution, the states are responsible for “the times, places and manner of holding elections,” with Congress also empowered to make rules.
But the Justice Department cited three federal laws — the Help America Vote Act, the National Voter Registration Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1960 — to justify its demands that states turn over their private, unredacted voter rolls.
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Judge Jarbou’s decision in Michigan knocked down that reasoning. She found that neither the Help America Vote Act nor the National Voter Registration Act requires disclosure of the records, and that the text of the Civil Rights Act does not apply to “a statewide computerized voter list.”
But perhaps the most stinging rebuke of the Justice Department’s efforts came from Oregon.
There, Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai, a Biden appointee, wrote last week that public statements and actions by the Justice Department forfeited the trust courts had traditionally granted to federal law enforcement.
The presumption that the department “could be taken at its word — with little doubt about its intentions and stated purposes — no longer holds,” Judge Kasubhai wrote. He added that when the department claims “that any private and sensitive data will remain private and used only for a declared and limited purpose, it must be thoroughly scrutinized and squared with its open and public statements to the contrary.”
During the case’s proceedings, Judge Kasubhai had zeroed in on a letter sent by Attorney General Pam Bondi to Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota. As tensions in the state escalated after federal agents killed two American citizens in January, Ms. Bondi wrote to Mr. Walz with “three simple steps” to restore order. One of those steps, she wrote, was for the state to hand over its voter rolls.
In the days that followed, Judge Kasubhai called a hearing to address Ms. Bondi’s letter. He said from the bench that he was making his decision on other legal grounds, but added that he had concerns about “the basis and the purpose” of the Justice Department’s pursuit of voter records based on what Ms. Bondi wrote in her letter to Mr. Walz.
In California, Judge David O. Carter, a Clinton appointee, was similarly focused on the motive of the Justice Department and the Trump administration as he rejected their lawsuit.
“Now it seems the executive branch of the United States government wants to abridge the right of many Americans to cast their ballots,” he wrote.
Last year, Mr. Trump signed an executive order that called for ramping up the role of the federal government in election security and requiring that prospective voters show proof of citizenship in order to register. The courts struck down the citizenship provision. The Republican-led Congress is considering legislation with a similar requirement.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly suggested he wants the Republican-led federal government to “nationalize” or “take over” the running of elections. After the F.B.I. seized truckloads of 2020 ballots from an election office in Fulton County, Ga., last month, Mr. Trump spoke directly with some of the frontline agents, a highly unusual intrusion by a president into the work of law enforcement.
Judge Carter’s 33-page opinion, which was issued before the raid, notes a provision in the Constitution that dictates that the running of elections be left up to the state and Congress. A role for the executive branch, he noted, is not specified.
“The erosion of privacy and rolling back of voting rights is a decision for open and public debate within the legislative branch, not the executive,” he wrote. “The Constitution demands such respect, and the executive may not unilaterally usurp the authority over elections it seeks to do so here.”
Nick Corasaniti is a Times reporter covering national politics, with a focus on voting and elections.
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