In 23rd loss for DOJ, federal judge rejects its demand for Minnesota voter rolls

Like 22 of her peers before her, a federal judge in Minnesota rejected the Trump administration’s crusade for unredacted state voter rolls.

In a decision Monday, U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez dismissed the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) lawsuit to compel production of the sensitive voter data, like Social Security numbers and dates of birth.

That gave the DOJ its 23rd trial court loss out of the 31 lawsuits the department has filed against states for unfettered access to their voter rolls.

The campaign, which has so far fared no better in appellate courts, is part of a multi-agency effort to prove President Donald Trump’s assertion that noncitizens vote illegally in large numbers — a claim that has been repeatedly debunked by studies and state audits. 

Menendez, a Joe Biden appointee, dismissed the DOJ’s argument that the 1960 Civil Rights Act (CRA) empowered the administration to demand unredacted voter rolls today. In reality, the law was enacted to help federal lawyers investigate racist election officials in the South who refused to register Black citizens by requiring them to hold onto records that come into their possession.

“As one court put it, ‘nothing supports the . . . supposition that Congress intended [the CRA] to be a freewheeling source of authority for the Attorney General to investigate any violation of federal election law,” Menendez wrote. 

Menendez also rejected the DOJ’s claims that it was entitled to the records to investigate compliance with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which requires states regularly maintain their voter registration lists. The DOJ never offered any evidence that Minnesota might have failed its HAVA duties, Menendez noted. 

“In other words, the government suggests it is permitted to use a civil action as a ‘fishing expedition,’” she wrote. “But an ordinary litigant isn’t allowed to seek discovery first and allege a claim later, and the federal government has no special privilege to do so either.”

The Minnesota decision comes shortly after a district court in Nevada handed down the administration’s 22nd loss on Friday. That same day, the full U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to rehear the department’s en banc appeal in its Michigan voter-roll case, leaving intact a circuit panel’s ruling against the administration.

In an NBC News interview Sunday, newly confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche called appealing the voter roll cases to the U.S. Supreme Court a “possibility.” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who has overseen these lawsuits, echoed that sentiment in a Bloomberg News interview Monday.

“We just got a ruling in the Sixth Circuit that had some very good language in the en banc from several very respected judges and so you may see us making a next stop at the Supreme Court on that,” she said.

Yunior Rivas contributed to this report.