Again and Again, Judges Dismiss Trump's voter data lawsuits

Voter data lawsuits from the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division have now been rejected by every federal judge who has ruled on them. Since September 2025, the department has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia to obtain unredacted voter rolls. Judges have issued final rulings in 26 of those cases. Every single one threw out the government's lawsuit.

Every voter data lawsuit targets confidential records. They hold info on millions of Americans. It's a lot. Those rolls have historically been managed by states, not Washington, and that's a fact people don't always remember when they talk about who really runs elections in this country. But now they sit at the center of President Donald Trump's push to take federal control over elections and prosecute alleged noncitizen voters. We've seen this fight before. It's not over.

An Unbroken Losing Streak

The judges assigned to these cases cut across the political spectrum, and the outcome did not change with their backgrounds.

• Eight Trump appointees ruled against the government.
• Four George W. Bush appointees did the same.
• Fourteen Democratic appointees joined them.

• 26 final rulings, all dismissing the lawsuits
• Four cases still undecided
• One state settled

The First Tactic Falls Apart

Seven Early Dismissals

The first seven voter data lawsuits shared an identical opening. Each cited Trump's March 2025 executive order on election integrity and claimed the Justice Department needed state voter rolls to check compliance with federal election laws.

Judges found no basis. No legal or factual ground existed for that demand, they concluded. Election laws do require states to keep accurate, current, computerized voter lists that include confidential information, which is a real obligation. But the statutes give the federal government only limited power to enforce those mandates.

"The United States' championing of its claims under the [election laws], in both its briefing and its presentation at the hearing on this matter, can only be described as halfhearted."

That assessment came from Maine federal Judge Lance E. Walker, a Trump appointee. Several other judges went further, accusing the administration of using election laws as a pretext to suppress voting.

"Public statements from government officials reveal its intentions: to create a nationwide voter-database, for potential weaponization in future elections; as a 'fishing expedition,' hoped to advance unsubstantiated claims of non-citizen voting; and as a tool for immigration enforcement."

Pennsylvania federal Judge Cathy Bissoon, an Obama appointee, wrote that passage. In Oregon, Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai called the government's actions "chilling" and said the presumption of regularity previously extended to the Justice Department "no longer holds." All seven lawsuits using the first tactic were dismissed.

A Civil Rights Law Turned Upside Down

Nineteen More Rejections

The next 19 voter data lawsuits took a different route. They made no mention of Trump's executive order and did not depend on federal voting laws. Instead, government lawyers cited Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, which requires the preservation of state and local election records.

The lawyers claimed Title III gave the attorney general "sweeping power" to obtain the records to curb noncitizen voting. Courts saw the law differently. Title III applies only to voter registration documents, not records that states generate themselves, such as voter rolls. The government also failed to explain why it needed the records, as the statute requires.

"Clearly, this demand is devoid of any factual basis."

That line came from West Virginia federal Judge Thomas E. Johnston, a George W. Bush appointee. But there was a deeper irony buried in the government's argument. Title III was originally the Justice Department's answer to two years of resistance and obstruction by state election officials who destroyed, failed to retain, or refused to disclose voting records that would prove Black voters had been unlawfully excluded from the rolls because of their race.

Eight Trump appointees, four Bush appointees, and fourteen Democratic appointees reached the same conclusion. Even judges who might have been expected to side with the administration rejected its reading of the law. Maryland Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher, a Trump appointee, noted the conflict between election laws requiring voter lists to be continuously updated and Title III's ban on altering records. The government's proposed interpretation, she wrote, would criminalize the same conduct that voting laws require.

Nineteen DOJ complaints are gone. Judges dismissed every single one of them, and each of those complaints relied on the Civil Rights Act claim, which means the Justice Department's theory hasn't persuaded the people who actually decide these cases in court. All 26 judges rejected the arguments. They're in written opinions. But the government keeps losing. And it's not close. In those written opinions, which run through the reasoning piece by piece, all 26 judges rejected the Justice Department's arguments, so we've now got a clear pattern that spans every ruling issued so far.

What Comes Next

The fate of the remaining voter data lawsuits now rests with appellate courts. The Trump administration has appealed most of its losses to federal appeals courts and has said it will consider taking the fight to the Supreme Court. The only appeal decided so far backed the district judge who threw out the Michigan case. The Sixth Circuit wrote that the government once used this power to ensure everyone who had the right to vote could freely exercise it, but now invokes Title III "for an inverse purpose" to ensure some people have not voted.

On Oct. 9, a U.S. district judge ruled that the Justice Department's national effort to acquire and share state voter rolls was an illegal abuse of authority. A department spokesperson said it is "reviewing the ruling."

A Justice Department spokesperson offered a broader defense of the litigation: "Our attorneys are skilled, principled advocates who argue every case honestly and in good faith. Disagreement with the government's position is not evidence of bad faith. We look forward to making our case on appeal."