Right-wing group asks Supreme Court for access to state voter rolls

The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) — a conservative legal group known for promoting voter roll purges — is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to force Hawaii to hand over its statewide voter file.

In a petition filed Friday, PILF asked the justices to review a ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that rejected its demand for Hawaii’s statewide list of registered voters. 

It’s the latest effort by the right-wing group to turn the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), a landmark pro-voter law, into a tool for scrutinizing voter records and fueling purges. And it could potentially help the anti-voting group gain access to other states’ voter rolls.

Passed in 1993, NVRA expanded registration access while protecting voters from wrongful removals. 

But PILF is now arguing that the law’s public disclosure provision — covering records concerning the implementation of list-maintenance programs — also requires states to turn over the roll itself. The group says the Ninth Circuit created a conflict with other federal appeals courts, including the First Circuit, that read the provision more broadly.

“After the Ninth Circuit’s decision, the statewide list of registered voters is public in some places and private in others,” PILF wrote. “Rights under the NVRA now depend on where someone lives.”

The dispute began after PILF requested Hawaii’s full statewide list in 2023. The state elections office directed the group to four county clerks, who handle voter registration and list requests under Hawaii law. 

The clerks answer to their county councils, not Hawaii Chief Election Officer Scott Nago.

Earlier this year, the Ninth Circuit ruled that PILF had standing, meaning it had suffered an injury sufficient to sue, because Nago’s office denied its request. But it rejected PILF’s claim on the merits. The court held that the NVRA requires disclosure of documents showing how list maintenance is carried out — such as duplicate-removal reports, manuals and correspondence — not the constantly changing roll those programs maintain. 

The court also noted that the NVRA requires covered records to be preserved for at least two years. Treating the live voter file as one of those records, it reasoned, could force states to save every interim version of a database that changes whenever someone registers, moves or is removed. 

The statewide list itself was later required by the Help America Vote Act, a separate 2002 law without a comparable disclosure provision or private right to enforce.

PILF dismissed the Ninth Circuit’s narrower reading as secrecy.

“The NVRA is not a ‘take our word for it’ statute,” the group wrote. “Secrecy frustrates Congress’s intent.”

The petition says PILF is not requesting information Hawaii treats as sensitive and points to redaction as a way to protect restricted fields. But PILF also says it uses statewide rolls to identify duplicate registrations, deceased or relocated registrants and records it may press officials to investigate.

The filing comes just over four months after the Supreme Court declined to hear two other PILF attempts to broaden enforcement of the NVRA. 

In Pennsylvania, PILF argued that a records denial alone should provide standing to sue. In Michigan, it asked the Court to revisit standing and whether the state was making a “reasonable effort” to remove deceased registrants. The justices denied both petitions in March without explanation. 

The Hawaii case is narrower. 

PILF presents only one legal question about access to the statewide roll. But if the Supreme Court takes the case and eventually rules in PILF’s favor, the decision could give anti-voting groups a federal route to obtain voter files and use them to build challenges aimed at purging voters.

Democracy Docket Researcher Maya Bodinson contributed to this reporting.