Federal judge vacates DOJ voter-roll data policy over privacy and authority violations

October 13–14: DOJ gives California 48 hours to segregate questioned ballots

Four days after the nationwide voter-list policy was vacated, Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter sent California and Los Angeles County a 48-hour demand to review a federal list of people believed to be likely noncitizens who had received mail ballots. Reuters and AP reviewed the letters, which asked officials to segregate returned ballots from listed voters and withhold unissued ballots until citizenship could be confirmed, under threat of emergency litigation. [6][7]

Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan said the list arrived on a thumb drive with a handwritten password and that he had not accessed it because he did not consider the device secure. The letters did not state how many people were flagged. Logan said eligibility action must rest on verifiable information, while California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said the federal government had not supplied evidence or legal authority for the demand. DOJ confirmed the letters and said it would take legal action it considered necessary to protect election integrity. [7][8][6]

The October 9 ruling invalidated DOJ's broader program for collecting and matching statewide voter files. The reviewed California letters may rely on a different asserted enforcement theory, and no court had ruled by this review whether the 48-hour demand is covered by the vacatur, violates the 90-day limit on systematic removals or lawfully targets specific ballots. The list's accuracy and citizenship matches also remain untested in public. [1][6][7]

Court vacates the nationwide policy

U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan on October 9 granted partial summary judgment to Common Cause and four U.S. citizens and vacated the Justice Department's Voter List Maintenance Policy. The court found that the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act did not authorize the program; it also found violations of the Administrative Procedure Act, the Privacy Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act. This is a federal trial-court decision and could be appealed. [1][2][3]

The remedy does not stop states from maintaining voter rolls under existing law, prevent lawful federal assistance or allow an ineligible person to vote. It invalidates this federal policy for collecting state voter files, matching them against federal records and pressing states to investigate or remove flagged registrations. The Justice Department told Reuters and CBS News that it was reviewing the decision; no appeal or request for a stay was identified in the reviewed material. [1][2][4]

The policy combined sensitive state records with immigration data

The opinion says DOJ sought unredacted voter-registration lists from 49 states and the District of Columbia and that at least 18 states fully cooperated. Depending on the state file, the records could include names, dates of birth, addresses, driver's-license numbers or partial Social Security numbers. The department planned to compare state files with the Department of Homeland Security's SAVE immigration-status system and other federal data. [1][2][5]

The court found that the matching process risked false flags because some Social Security Administration records do not reflect later naturalization. The four individual plaintiffs are U.S. citizens whose registrations were canceled after state action based on federal information; Courthouse News reported that plaintiff Anthony Nel was reinstated after renewing his passport. Those four cases document actual errors in this lawsuit, but they are not a verified nationwide count of every voter affected. [1][3]

The ruling and the separate SAVE case are different

A different federal ruling in June addressed the Trump administration's expansion of the SAVE database for election officials, and the Supreme Court temporarily paused that judgment in September while litigation continued. The October 9 decision concerns DOJ's broader voter-list policy, including its collection of state files and cross-matching demands. The Supreme Court's interim action in the separate case was not a final ruling that either policy is lawful. [1][2][4]

Federal law's 90-day quiet period for systematic voter-roll removals was already limiting changes before the November 3 elections. Reuters reported that this may reduce the decision's immediate effect on the midterms, while CBS News said the ruling applies both to files DOJ already received and to files still being contested. Questions about retention, deletion and future use of collected data remain consequential even where election calendars prevent immediate removals. [2][4][1]

Voters and states now face unresolved implementation questions

Registered voters whose records are outdated or incomplete — especially naturalized citizens — face the clearest risk of erroneous removal. All voters whose sensitive registration data entered the federal process also have a privacy interest. States retain their own legal duties to maintain accurate rolls and protect eligible voters, but the ruling rejects the federal government's claim that the cited statutes authorized this particular nationwide collection and matching policy. [1][3][4]

The next material developments are whether DOJ appeals or seeks a stay, how it handles files already received, whether states restore any registrations canceled on erroneous flags and how this case interacts with the separate SAVE litigation. The reviewed record does not establish a national total of wrongful removals, and the ruling should not be read as a finding that every state list-maintenance action is unlawful. [1][2][4]

How the sources compare