Right-Wing Legal Group Sues to Obtain Utah’s Voter Roll

An anti-voting lawsuit filed Friday is demanding full access to Utah’s voter registration list — including records that are private or classified as protected under state law.

A Utah voter, represented by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), accuses the state’s top election official, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson (R), of violating the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) by refusing to turn over the full statewide voter file.

The lawsuit claims that Utah’s current system — which withholds access to “private” and “withheld” voter registration records and obscures year-of-birth data for most registrants — violates Section 8 of the NVRA.

PILF has launched similar efforts in other states, using access to voter rolls as a tool to challenge list maintenance practices and pressure officials to remove voters from the rolls.

“The Statewide Voter Registration List is a record covered by the Public Disclosure Provision of the NVRA,” the lawsuit states – referring to a section of the NVRA that PILF interprets as requiring disclosure of voter data regardless of state privacy laws.

The plaintiff alleges he needs the records to assess “whether Utah is employing voter list maintenance best practices” and determine if “election officials are protecting his fundamental right to vote.”

Utah allows voters to request private status for their registrations and to withhold their data entirely if they qualify as a “protected individual.” But the plaintiffs argue that these protections, especially those grandfathered in before 2020, are applied too broadly — and wrongly shield voter information from public scrutiny.

The plaintiff is asking the court to declare that federal law supersedes Utah’s restrictions and to force the state to release the complete statewide list — including private and withheld registrations. They also seek a permanent injunction blocking Utah from denying similar requests in the future. 

The lawsuit is part of PILF’s broader campaign to access state voter rolls and challenge registration records, often citing the need for transparency, while laying the groundwork for voter roll removals. Courts have delivered mixed rulings in similar cases — with some siding with PILF and others upholding states’ privacy laws.

Late Update 6/9: Douglas Blair, a spokesman for PILF, wrote in an email:

“[N]o court has ruled against our position when it comes to the application of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and state privacy laws. The cases you cite [at the link above] involving Wisconsin and Minnesota are irrelevant as those states are exempt from the NVRA under current federal law. The decisions upholding their voter roll access limitations were based on that exemption.”