Pennsylvania’s voter rolls are safe from DOJ’s grab, rules federal judge, bringing Justice Dept record to 0-10

By Brentin Mock

WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 29: Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon (C) departs after former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi testified at a closed-door interview with the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill on May 29, 2026 in Washington, DC. Bondi was asked about the federal government's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case and release of related files to the public. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

A federal judge dismissed the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) lawsuit against Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, who rejected its request for the state’s unredacted voter files. 

Saturday’s order was the tenth straight loss in courts for President Donald Trump and U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who’ve sued thirty states and Washington, D.C. to gain unfettered access to voter registration lists – an unprecedented intrusion into states’ authority. 

Those losses don’t include a federal appeals court dismissal of a DOJ lawsuit seeking similar private voter information from Michigan, handed down on June 24 – collectively a decisive blow to Trump’s unconstitutional crusade to wrest control of election administration from the states.

While the DOJ has claimed that it needs the unredacted files to confirm that states’ voter list maintenance are in compliance with federal laws, U.S. District Chief Judge Cathy Bissoon saw through that reasoning in Saturday’s ruling. 

“The quiet parts do not help,” wrote Bissoon. “Public statements from government officials reveal its intentions: to create a nationwide voter-database, for potential weaponization in future elections; as a ‘fishing expedition,’ hoped to advance unsubstantiated claims of non-citizen voting; and as a tool for immigration enforcement.”

The DOJ also claimed it had authority under the Civil Rights Act to demand Pennsylvania’s voter files, as it has in its other lawsuits. But as with those other cases, Judge Bissoon rejected this argument, reminding the Justice Department that the Civil Rights Act is “a statute enacted to combat systemic racism against black citizens.”

In fact, Bissoon said the DOJ’s argument “does violence” to a section of the Civil Rights Act that prohibits anyone, including election officials, from intentionally stealing, destroying or altering election records – “Tortured statutory construction tends to yield such a result,” wrote Bissoon. 

On top of that, Bissoon said that DOJ filed its Civil Rights Act grievance in the wrong court, which tracks with this Justice Department administration’s long list of blunders as it has pursued these files. 

The Justice Department is still seeking voter rolls in all 50 states, and some of them have voluntarily complied. But no federal court has ruled yet that the DOJ actually has any legal basis or purpose for demanding, let alone retrieving such sensitive, private files.