Even after 23 straight losses, Trump DOJ keeps appealing its voter roll cases

President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice appealed yet another round of defeats Monday in its nationwide campaign to obtain states’ unredacted voter rolls, as its district court record now stands at 0 for 23.

DOJ filed new appeals from recent losses in Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey and Washington, D.C., sending the cases to the 10th, 7th, 3rd and D.C. Circuits, respectively.

The latest filings bring DOJ’s active voter roll appeals to 19 cases across nine federal circuits, as the department continues defending the same theory courts around the country have repeatedly rejected: that Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 gives the attorney general authority to compel states to surrender complete statewide voter registration databases containing sensitive information.

DOJ has appealed 20 voter roll losses overall, including its completed Sixth Circuit defeat in Michigan.

DOJ has now lost all 23 district court rulings to reach a decision, including its latest defeats in Nevada and Minnesota. The department has not yet appealed either ruling.

West Virginia is also awaiting a formal judgment. DOJ asked the district court there to dispose of outstanding motions and direct the clerk to enter final judgment after its case was dismissed, saying the clerk informed the department that judgment could not be entered until those motions were resolved. 

Final judgment would clear the way for DOJ to appeal that loss as well.

The wave of appeals comes as senior DOJ officials openly signal that the department may soon ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.

Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sunday that taking the voter roll fight to the high court was absolutely “a possibility” and vowed that DOJ was “not going to stop.”

A day later, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon pointed to favorable language from several Sixth Circuit judges despite DOJ’s loss there, saying “you may see us making a next stop at the Supreme Court on that.”

DOJ’s lone completed appeal so far ended in defeat in Michigan. A Sixth Circuit panel rejected the department’s voter roll theory, and the full appeals court later declined DOJ’s request to rehear the case en banc.

The department nevertheless continues appealing virtually every adverse ruling.

Its new Illinois appeal, for example, seeks review of a decision that dismissed DOJ’s case with prejudice after the judge ruled that Congress did not give the department a general auditing power over state election officials. The Colorado and New Jersey appeals likewise challenge dismissals “with prejudice.

Meanwhile, seven district court cases remain unresolved in Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Utah, Vermont and Washington. The Idaho and Hawaii cases are paused while the Ninth Circuit considers related appeals.

Despite an unbroken string of district court defeats and its first appellate loss, DOJ has shown no sign of narrowing or abandoning the legal theory at the center of its voter roll crusade — instead pushing the dispute into nearly every available level of the federal courts.