A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected the Trump administration’s demand for Michigan’s voter registration data, marking the first appellate loss in the Justice Department’s nationwide campaign to obtain unredacted voter rolls from states across the country.
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s decision blocking the DOJ from accessing Michigan’s sensitive voter information, which could include Social Security numbers and driver’s license identification numbers. The three-judge panel affirmed that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson was not obligated to produce the confidential data the department sought.
Writing for the appellate majority, Circuit Judge Andre Mathis said the 1960 Civil Rights Act that the Justice Department relied on in its lawsuit did not cover Michigan’s aggregated voter file. “Back then, the government used this power to ensure that everyone who had the right to vote could freely exercise that right,” Mathis wrote. “But today, the government invokes Title III for an inverse purpose—to ensure that some people have not voted.”
This appeals court ruling is a major setback for Trump’s broader voter data initiative. The Justice Department has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia after they refused to provide their unredacted voter rolls. The DOJ has now lost all ten cases decided to date: nine at the district court level and one at the appellate level, according to Democracy Docket.
The case centered on the DOJ’s demand for Michigan’s statewide voter registration database. The department sought not only voters’ names but also sensitive personal information including dates of birth, partial Social Security numbers, and driver’s license numbers. Benson refused to provide the unredacted file, offering only the public version of the list.
The court found that Michigan’s voter file is not the kind of record the DOJ can demand under Title III because it is created and maintained by the state itself, not received from voters. Mathis wrote that “an ordinary English speaker would not say that she has come into possession of something that she created, established, and maintained.” The court also warned that the DOJ’s interpretation would place election officials in an impossible position, forcing them to violate federal laws like the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act that require states to keep voter rolls current.
The ruling is also a direct rejection of a legal memo the DOJ issued for itself on the eve of oral argument in May. The court said it rejected the Office of Legal Counsel’s interpretation of Title III, noting that the memo was issued roughly 66 years after the law’s enactment. Additionally, the appeals court found that the DOJ’s demand letters failed to meet the statute’s requirement that the department tell states both the basis and purpose for demanding covered records.
Judge Andre Mathis, appointed by President Joe Biden, wrote the majority 2-1 opinion and was joined by Judge R. Guy Cole Jr., appointed by President Bill Clinton. Judge John Nalbandian, appointed by Trump, dissented.
Because Kentucky is also in the Sixth Circuit, Wednesday’s ruling is binding precedent for the DOJ’s pending voter roll lawsuit there, making it all but certain that case will be dismissed as well. Appeals are already pending from the DOJ’s losses in California, Oregon, Arizona, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, and Wisconsin, giving states a major new precedent to cite as they fight similar demands.
