U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan struck down the Justice Department’s nationwide voter-list policy. She blocked the Trump administration from collecting voter registration records and checking suspected non-U.S. citizens’ status, even in states that had cooperated. Sooknanan ruled that the department exceeded its legal authority and violated federal privacy laws by seeking sensitive voter information and sharing it with other agencies.
The ruling halted the program nationwide. At least 18 states had complied with the department’s requests, handing over unredacted voter registration records that included names, addresses and partial Social Security numbers. The policy put federal agencies inside a process that states have traditionally overseen: voter registration and maintenance of voter rolls.
Federal Authority and State 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 requested unredacted voter lists nationwide. It sent records from participating states to the Department of Homeland Security, which checked citizenship status through the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database.
Participating states also agreed to remove voters identified as ineligible within 45 days of notification. The plaintiffs argued that the administration was trying to take control of state voter-registration procedures and put eligible Americans at risk of wrongful removal. That claim sat at the heart of the dispute over how far federal officials could go in using state records to assess voters’ citizenship.
The Risk of Erroneous Removal
Sooknanan found that the Justice Department hadn't adequately considered the risk of mistakenly removing eligible voters, despite knowing that federal citizenship records contained inaccuracies. Her ruling cited a 2006 Social Security Administration audit, which found approximately 3.3 million U.S. citizens had been misidentified as noncitizens.
“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. The ruling described previous removals and the possibility that the policy could strip additional eligible voters of their registration.
The 78-page decision invalidated the policy nationwide. Multiple states had already won challenges to the Justice Department rule in their own jurisdictions before Sooknanan’s ruling blocked the program across the country.
The Challenge and the Ruling
Common Cause and four voters filed suit in April. They accused the administration of seeking to create a “sprawling new voter surveillance and purging apparatus” ahead of November’s midterm elections. Their lawsuit challenged the collection and use of voter records, as well as the potential consequences for people listed as ineligible.
Sooknanan, a Biden appointee, wrote: “DOJ can't run roughshod over longstanding laws that were carefully crafted to protect the rights of American people.” Her decision addressed the department’s authority to request sensitive information and pass it to other agencies for citizenship checks. The ruling blocks the nationwide policy; it doesn't report a separate determination about how every participating state will handle its voter records.