Trump DOJ hit with 12th straight loss in voter roll crusade after court dismisses its New York demand

A federal judge threw out the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) lawsuit seeking New York’s unredacted statewide voter registration list, delivering another blow to President Donald Trump’s effort to seize sensitive voter registration data.

Friday night’s ruling marked the department’s 12th straight loss in lower courts in its legal crusade to force all 50 states and the District of Columbia to hand over their voter rolls to the federal government.

U.S. District Judge Mae D’Agostino, who former President Barack Obama nominated, ruled that New York’s voter roll was not a record the DOJ could obtain through legal force. 

Rejecting the DOJ’s arguments, D’Agostino found that neither the Civil Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), nor the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) authorized the department’s demands against the Empire State.

“For these reasons, this Court joins every district court to have addressed this issue in concluding that a voter registration list is not a record or paper that a state must produce to the Government,” the judge wrote.

“It has long been recognized that the Elections Clause entrusts the administration of federal elections to the States,” she added.

In the lower courts, the DOJ now stands at 0-12 in the 31 voter roll lawsuits it has brought against states and D.C. as judges from across the ideological spectrum — including many nominated by Trump in his first term — have ruled against the department’s legal theories. 

Faced with a complete shutout at the district court level, the DOJ has quickly moved to appeal all its losses to higher courts. However, so far, it hasn’t found success in appeals courts, either.

Last month, a three-judge panel for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of the DOJ’s voter roll lawsuit against Michigan. That ruling marked the department’s first appellate loss. Seeking to erase that loss, the DOJ this week asked for a rehearing before the full Sixth Circuit.

The DOJ’s voter roll effort comes as part of Trump’s wider effort to federalize the creation and maintenance of state voter registration rolls — and therefore control who can and cannot vote.

While the department has repeatedly claimed it seeks voter registration data to ensure states comply with voter roll maintenance requirements under the NVRA and HAVA, it has never clearly stated how it intends to verify compliance.

Internal DOJ emails indicate that the department may intend to feed the data through a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) database that Trump officials recently revamped into a new system to monitor and shape state voter registration lists. However, a federal judge recently barred DHS from using the database to remove voters from rolls.

New research from the Center for Election Innovation & Research this week showed that state voter registration lists are accurate and up to date, strongly indicating states are complying with the NVRA’s routine list maintenance procedures.

Alongside the DOJ’s voter roll demands to states, Trump, through an executive order earlier this year, also tried to unilaterally direct DHS and the United States Postal Service (USPS) to create national voter registration lists as part of his wider effort to seize states’ power to run elections.

Several states and organizations have challenged Trump’s order, and courts have blocked portions of it, including its demand that USPS create and maintain a national list of people who vote by mail.