A federal judge in Maryland last week delivered the Trump administration’s latest legal setback in its effort to obtain detailed state voter records, dismissing a Justice Department lawsuit that sought access to the state’s unredacted voter registration file.
U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, an appointee of President Donald Trump, ruled that the file is not a record Maryland must turn over to the federal government. In her dismissal order, Gallagher wrote that she “joins every court to have addressed this issue” in reaching that conclusion.
The ruling marked the ninth state in which the DOJ has lost a lawsuit seeking similar voter data, according to the Associated Press. The department has filed such cases in more than 30 states and the District of Columbia.
The voter data the Justice Department has been pursuing includes dates of birth, residential addresses, driver’s license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers — information that state officials have argued raises significant privacy concerns over federal access to state-run registration systems.
While the Maryland case is the most recent defeat, the DOJ’s national push has met uniform resistance from courts across the country, regardless of the appointing president of the presiding judge. Gallagher, named to the bench by Trump during his first term, is among the latest Republican-appointed judges to rule against the administration on this issue.
The Trump administration has characterized the data requests as necessary for election integrity efforts, including the verification of voter eligibility and the detection of non-citizen voting. State officials and voting rights groups have countered that the requests exceed federal statutory authority and threaten the privacy of lawfully registered voters.
The Justice Department did not comment on the dismissal. Maryland officials have not publicly responded to the ruling.
The lawsuit is one of several fronts in a broader administration campaign to tighten voting rules. Earlier efforts this year have included executive orders limiting mail-in voting, attempts to create a federal list of eligible voters, and litigation in multiple states. Courts have blocked or dismissed many of those initiatives, while a handful of challenges remain pending.