Courts Block Trump Effort to Obtain State Voter Rolls Ahead of Midterms

Courts are repeatedly shutting down the Trump administration’s bid to obtain state voter rolls, turning a records fight into a test of how far the federal government can reach into election administration before the midterms.

Federal judges have dismissed Justice Department cases against California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon and Rhode Island, a string of losses that has slowed the administration’s push to collect statewide voter registration lists. The department began making those requests in May 2025, seeking data that includes birthdates, partial Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers. A University of Wisconsin State Democracy Research tracker says the department has filed lawsuits against 29 states and Washington, D.C., seeking orders to compel disclosure.

The legal fight sits on a narrow edge between federal oversight and state control. Federal law requires states to maintain a reasonable program to remove ineligible voters from the rolls, but 52 U.S.C. 20507 also limits disclosure of certain registration information. The Civil Rights Act of 1960 created federal inspection of local voter-registration records to fight discriminatory registration practices, and the administration is now invoking that history to justify broader data demands. Critics say that stretches an old enforcement tool into a much larger federal collection effort.

The pressure point is privacy. The Brennan Center for Justice has called the requests unprecedented and warned that the data include highly sensitive personal information. Bloomberg Law reported that the department plans to run voter data through the Homeland Security Department’s SAVE system to check citizenship, adding another layer to a campaign that state officials and voting-rights groups say goes far beyond routine list maintenance.

The unusual feature of the fight is who is bringing it. Voting-rights lawyers have long battled state restrictions on voting access, but this year the Justice Department itself has become a central player in election litigation. Lis Frost of Elias Law Group said, “the Department of Justice being perhaps the main player in voter suppression litigation,” a line that captures how sharply the ground has shifted.

The stakes rise with the November 3, 2026 midterms, when control of the House and Senate will be at issue. The party holding the White House has historically lost House seats in most midterms, making any attempt to influence election administration politically explosive. In Alaska, civil-rights groups including Common Cause, the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska and the League of Women Voters of Alaska sued over an agreement allowing election officials to share voter data with the Justice Department, arguing it threatened privacy and could lead to unlawful disenfranchisement.

What began as a demand for records now looks like a larger contest over who controls American elections, and how much personal data the federal government can collect in the name of integrity.