A federal judge just blocked the Justice Department from auditing state voter rolls for non-citizens, ruling the federal government has no authority to compel states to hand over their registration data — meaning Americans head into November's midterms with rolls nobody at the federal level is allowed to verify.
US District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, a Biden appointee, vacated the DOJ's voter list maintenance program in a 78-page ruling Friday. The policy, adopted under President Trump's election integrity executive order, required states to produce unredacted voter data so the DOJ could cross-check it against immigration databases and then instruct states to remove non-citizens within 45 days. Sooknanan ruled Congress never gave the executive branch that power — and that the Constitution leaves voter roll authority with the states.
The DOJ demanded states produce sensitive voter information including full names, birth dates, residential addresses, driver's license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers, according to The Guardian. At least 18 states complied. What the administration did with that data since obtaining it remains unclear, CNN reported.
"Behind all the window dressing, the challenged policy represents the federal government's attempt to decide who gets to vote," Sooknanan wrote. "But Congress has left that authority where our Constitution has always placed it: with the states."
The judge said the DOJ "failed to consider the risk that its use of citizenship records known to be unreliable would lead the civil rights division to demand that states remove US citizens from their voter rolls," The Guardian reported. She cited two people who were incorrectly removed from their state's voter rolls after being wrongly identified as non-citizens.
CNN framed the ruling as a "stinging rebuke" of the Trump administration's transformation of the Civil Rights Division, emphasizing the judge's charge that the DOJ ran "roughshod over longstanding laws that were carefully crafted to protect the rights of the American people." The Guardian focused on privacy violations and the risk of disenfranchisement. Both outlets buried the core question: if nobody can audit the rolls, who ensures only citizens are registered?
Common Cause, the watchdog group that brought the lawsuit, celebrated the decision. "This is a victory for voters and yet another loss for the Department of Justice," said Virginia Kase Solomón, the group's president and CEO. "It's time the Trump administration stop these desperate attempts to seize voters' private data and take control of our elections."
The ruling leaves a gap. If the federal government can't compel audits and states face no uniform mandate to verify citizenship, the system runs on trust. Sooknanan noted her order "does not prevent the federal government from taking lawful steps to support states' efforts to maintain accurate voter rolls" — but what "lawful steps" survive this ruling is an open question.
Sooknanan previously ruled against the administration in June on a related database program. The Supreme Court temporarily set aside that decision. The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Constitution gives states authority over their elections. It also gives citizens the right to have their votes count — and not be diluted by illegal registrations. The judge enforced the first principle. The second just got harder to secure.
