In good sign for voters, court won’t fast-track Trump DOJ voter roll appeals

A federal appeals court declined Monday to put three Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) voter roll appeals on the emergency timeline the department requested, slowing its push for sensitive voter data from Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island before a key federal deadline.

The more deliberate schedule could make it harder for DOJ to obtain state rolls in time to help states purge voters.

The First Circuit Court of Appeals refused to consolidate the three appeals and declined to adopt the Department of Justice’s proposed expedited schedule, instead ordering separate briefing under a regular timeline.

The order is a procedural setback for President Donald Trump’s DOJ, which is trying to recover from an unprecedented losing streak in its nationwide crusade to obtain unredacted statewide voter rolls. 

DOJ is now 0-11 in district court voter roll cases, 0-1 in appeals court and has yet to win a single court order requiring a state to turn over unredacted statewide voter data.

“Regarding the request to expedite, a standard briefing schedule immediately will be entered in each appeal,” the court wrote. “Plaintiff-appellant is free to file its opening brief in each case before the deadline set out in the operative schedule and is free to file any reply brief immediately upon service of the relevant response brief.”

That means the cases could still move faster if DOJ files its briefs early. Under the order, the pro-voting parties’ response briefs will be due 30 days after DOJ serves its opening briefs, with DOJ’s replies due 21 days after that.

But the schedule is still not what DOJ asked for.

In its Maine motion to expedite, DOJ asked the court to require its opening brief by July 8, responses by July 29 and its reply by Aug. 5. DOJ said it was filing similar motions in its Massachusetts and Rhode Island appeals and seeking the same schedule in all three cases.

The Aug. 5 date matters. It falls exactly 90 days before the Nov. 3 federal election. That is the start of the quiet period, a core protection under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) that generally bars states from conducting programs designed to systematically remove voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election.

DOJ made the election calendar central to its request.

“An expedited appeal is necessary to secure the elections in Maine and permit Maine the time to clean its voter rolls prior to the election this fall,” DOJ wrote.

The department also argued that it needed a fast ruling because Maine’s next federal election is “rapidly approaching” and election officials would soon be mailing absentee ballots to voters. 

DOJ alleged that ballots could go to “ineligible voters, fraudulent registrants, or other individuals who should not have been registered.”

But the most revealing part of DOJ’s motion came later, when the department addressed the NVRA’s 90-day quiet period directly.

“Although the NVRA limits ‘systematic removals’ within 90 days of ‘the date of a primary or general election for Federal office,’” DOJ wrote. “States retain authority to engage in plenty of list-maintenance activities after that date.”

That argument is a major red flag for voting rights advocates.

The quiet period exists because mass voter purges close to an election can wrongly remove eligible voters with too little time to fix the error. 

By insisting states can still conduct “plenty” of removals after the deadline, the department is attempting to keep the door open for late-stage voter roll purges even as federal law is supposed to be closing it.

The department drove the point home at the end of its motion.

“Maine would not be prejudiced by expediting the appeal,” DOJ wrote. “If anything, a rapid resolution of this matter will permit Maine to properly conduct an election this fall without the specter of non-citizens and ineligible voters remaining on its voter rolls.”

The same fight is unfolding against the backdrop of a case taken by the U.S. Supreme Court that could reshape the law around citizenship checks and last-minute voter purges. The Court has agreed to hear a Republican-led challenge seeking to revive Arizona voter restrictions, including proof-of-citizenship requirements and provisions for removing voters whose citizenship cannot be confirmed. Lower courts blocked parts of those restrictions for violating the NVRA.

For now though, DOJ’s nationwide effort to seize private voter data from states is still losing in court. The First Circuit’s decision was narrow but important — appeals will move forward, but not on the department’s purge-happy schedule.