Judge Strikes Down Justice Department's Nationwide Program to Screen State Voter Rolls

A federal judge in Washington on Friday struck down the Justice Department's nationwide campaign to collect and screen state voter registration lists, ruling that the program had no basis in federal law and ordering it vacated just weeks before the November midterm elections.

U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan granted a motion for partial summary judgment in a 78-page memorandum opinion filed in Common Cause v. United States Department of Justice, No. 1:26-cv-01352, finding that the department's "Voter List Maintenance Policy" violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Privacy Act. The ruling applies to voter files the department has already obtained from states as well as those still being fought over in litigation elsewhere in the country.

What the Ruling Covers

Sooknanan's order vacates the policy in its entirety rather than narrowing it. It reaches even the states that voluntarily turned over their voter rolls, meaning the department's existing copies of those lists are now without legal footing. The judge wrote that the department "cannot run roughshod over longstanding laws that were carefully crafted to protect the rights of the American people," and found that Congress never gave the Justice Department authority to compel the lists, cross-check them against immigration and Social Security data, or press states to remove voters it flagged as ineligible.

The decision is not a blanket prohibition on federal involvement in election administration. Sooknanan was explicit that it "does not prevent the federal government from taking lawful steps to support states' efforts to maintain accurate voter rolls," and it leaves states free to manage their own rolls as they see fit. The distinction, in her reading, is that Congress "left that authority where our Constitution has always placed it: with the states."

The Policy at the Center of the Fight

The program traces back to an executive order President Trump signed in March, "Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections," which directed the Department of Homeland Security to compile a "State Citizenship List" for each state using Social Security Administration data, naturalization records and the SAVE database, and ordered the U.S. Postal Service to draft stricter rules for mail ballots. The Justice Department followed with demands that states hand over complete, unredacted voter files, citing a Justice Department legal opinion issued in May that concluded the Civil Rights Act of 1960 let the Civil Rights Division request the data and share it with Homeland Security.

States that balked were sued. By late February, the department had brought suits against Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia and New Jersey alone, part of a wave of litigation against two dozen states and the District of Columbia. Attorney General Pam Bondi framed the effort as a matter of basic competence, saying "accurate, well-maintained voter rolls are a requisite for the election integrity that the American people deserve," while Civil Rights Division chief Harmeet Dhillon accused state officials of "choosing to fight us in court rather than show their work."

Who the Ruling Touches

The immediate beneficiaries are the roughly 39 million registered voters across eleven states and the District of Columbia whose data Common Cause says it has kept out of federal hands through related litigation, plus voters in every other state where officials either refused to comply or are still fighting the department in court. Naturalized citizens were a particular concern for plaintiffs, who argued that cross-checking stale federal citizenship records against voter rolls risked flagging eligible voters as noncitizens and triggering wrongful purges close to an election. State election officials, who had been caught between federal subpoenas and their own public-records and privacy laws, are now relieved of the immediate obligation to produce the lists, though many still face separate, state-specific suits the department filed over the past year.

A String of Courtroom Losses

Friday's ruling extends a pattern that has defined the litigation all year. Common Cause and its coalition partners, who brought the case along with four individual voters, say they are now 22-0 against the department across related suits. Eighteen states fully complied with the department's original requests, according to court filings cited in news coverage of the case, while judges in Oregon, Michigan and California have separately blocked the administration from inspecting those states' data. Sooknanan herself ruled in June that a rebuilt version of the SAVE database had been created unlawfully, though the Supreme Court temporarily stayed that ruling last month while an appeal proceeds.

• States sued by the Justice Department for refusing to produce voter rolls: at least 29, plus the District of Columbia
• States that fully complied with the original data requests: 18
• Voters covered by the lawsuits Common Cause says it has defended: more than 39 million
• Record Common Cause and allied groups claim against the department in related suits: 22-0

Reaction

Common Cause, which has positioned itself as the lead plaintiffs' group in the fight, cast Friday's ruling as validation of its strategy of challenging the administration case by case rather than waiting for a single consolidated outcome.

"A victory for voters and yet another loss for the Department of Justice," Common Cause CEO Virginia Kase Solomón said of the ruling.

A Justice Department spokesperson said only that the agency was reviewing the decision, and did not say whether it would appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The department has appealed adverse rulings from other courts this year, including the Oregon and Michigan cases, so an appeal in this matter would not be out of step with its approach so far.

What Happens Next

The practical effect on the midterm elections is likely to be limited regardless of what the department does next. Federal law bars the systematic removal of voters from registration rolls within 90 days of a federal election, a window that has already closed for the November contests in most states, meaning the policy's vacatur mostly forecloses future data collection rather than reversing purges that have already taken place. The department's separate fight over the SAVE database remains alive at the Supreme Court, and litigation continues in the handful of states where cases are still pending rather than resolved. For now, Sooknanan's order leaves the Justice Department without the legal tool it spent most of 2026 trying to build, and without an apparent fallback beyond an appeal it has not yet confirmed it will file.