U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan blocked the Justice Department from collecting voter records nationwide and sharing them with other agencies to check people’s citizenship status. The decision halted a policy that put eligible voters at risk of removal from the rolls.
In a 78-page ruling, Sooknanan struck down the Trump administration’s voter-list maintenance policy across the country. She found the department exceeded its legal authority and violated federal privacy laws by requesting sensitive registration information and sharing it for citizenship checks.
Who Controlled the Records
The program began last year, after President Trump issued an executive order directing federal officials to work with states to identify potential election-law violations. The Justice Department then sought unredacted voter registration lists nationwide, including names, addresses and partial Social Security numbers.
At least 18 states complied. They allowed the department to share records with the Department of Homeland Security, which checked citizenship status through the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database. Participating states also agreed to remove voters identified as ineligible within 45 days of notification.
The policy moved sensitive voter information from state registration systems into a federal process involving multiple agencies. States traditionally oversee voter registration procedures, the plaintiffs said, and the department’s effort to take control put eligible Americans at risk of wrongful removal.
Sooknanan found that the department hadn’t adequately considered that risk, even though it knew federal citizenship records contained inaccuracies. She cited a 2006 Social Security Administration audit that found approximately 3.3 million U.S. citizens had been misidentified as noncitizens.
The Cost of Mistaken Identification
The judge said the policy had already removed citizens from voter rolls in their home states and risked disenfranchising more. “The Court vacates a policy that has removed United States citizens from the voter rolls in their home states and risks disenfranchising many more,” Sooknanan wrote.
Her ruling also addressed how the administration sought and used the records. “DOJ cannot run roughshod over longstanding laws that were carefully crafted to protect the rights of American people,” wrote Sooknanan, a Biden appointee.
The Justice Department said its purpose followed Trump’s executive order: identifying potential election-law violations. But the court found that this purpose didn’t authorize the department to request and share sensitive voter information in violation of federal privacy laws.
Legal Challenge and Limits
Voting rights group Common Cause and four voters filed suit in April. They accused the administration of trying to build a “sprawling new voter surveillance and purging apparatus” ahead of November’s midterm elections. The plaintiffs argued that the policy threatened eligible voters with wrongful removal while transferring authority over registration procedures from states to the federal government.
Multiple states had already won challenges to the Justice Department rule in their jurisdictions before Sooknanan invalidated it nationwide. Earlier rulings blocked the policy in individual jurisdictions; this decision barred it across the country.
The case centered on the department’s authority, privacy protections and the documented risk of inaccurate citizenship records. The ruling blocks the federal program, while the source describes no change to the underlying state responsibility for voter registration or to the inaccuracies cited in the audit.