Since September 2025, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia to demand their unredacted voter rolls, which contain confidential information on millions of Americans and have historically been managed by the states. The litigation is a major focus of President Donald Trump’s push to take federal control over elections and to prosecute alleged noncitizen voters. To date, there have been final rulings in 26 of the DOJ lawsuits; four cases are yet to be decided, and one state settled.

Of the judges randomly assigned to the 26 decided cases, eight were Trump appointees, four were appointed by George W. Bush, and 14 were appointed by Democrats. Every one of them rejected the Justice Department’s arguments and threw out its lawsuits.

The first seven lawsuits used the same opening, citing Trump’s March 2025 executive order on election integrity to claim the Justice Department needed the states’ voter rolls to check that they were following federal election laws. Maine federal Judge Lance E. Walker, a Trump appointee, wrote that “the United States’ championing of its claims under the [election laws], in both its briefing and its presentation at the hearing on this matter, can only be described as halfhearted. And for good reason, since neither statute gives the United States the power to compel Maine to produce its current [unredacted voter list].”

The judges ruled that there was no legal or factual basis for the government’s demand, noting that federal statutes require states to keep accurate, up-to-date computerized voter lists that include confidential information but give the federal government limited power to enforce those mandates. Several judges accused the administration of using the election laws as a pretext to suppress voting.

“The foundation upon which American democracy has been built is the right to vote,” California federal Judge David O. Carter, a Clinton appointee, wrote. “Now it seems the Executive Branch of the United States government wants to abridge the right of many Americans to cast their ballots. … The Court does not take lightly DOJ’s obfuscation of its true motives.”

Pennsylvania federal Judge Cathy Bissoon, an Obama appointee, wrote that “public statements from government officials reveal its intentions: to create a nationwide voter-database, for potential weaponization in future elections; as a ‘fishing expedition,’ hoped to advance unsubstantiated claims of non-citizen voting; and as a tool for immigration enforcement.”

In what ProPublica called an extraordinary rebuke echoed by other courts around the country, the judge hearing the Oregon case — Mustafa T. Kasubhai, a Biden appointee — wrote that the federal government’s actions undermined the judiciary’s longstanding trust in the Justice Department and called them “chilling.” “The presumption of regularity that has been previously extended to Plaintiff that it could be taken at its word — with little doubt about its intentions and stated purposes — no longer holds,” Kasubhai wrote.

All seven of those lawsuits were dismissed.

The next 19 lawsuits used a different strategy. They made no mention of Trump’s executive order and did not depend on the federal voting laws, instead citing a provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 called Title III, which requires the preservation of state and local election records. Government lawyers claimed Title III gave the attorney general sweeping power to obtain these records to curb noncitizen voting.

Judges rejected that argument as well, ruling that Title III applies only to voter registration documents, not records that states generate themselves, such as voter rolls. They noted the government had also failed to give an explanation of why it needed the records, as the statute requires. “Clearly, this demand is devoid of any factual basis,” West Virginia federal Judge Thomas E. Johnston, a Bush appointee, wrote.

Several judges marveled at the audacity of the administration’s attempt to use an anti-discrimination law to keep people from voting and condemned the administration’s logic.

“Title III was the Department of Justice’s answer to two years of resistance and obstruction by state election officials who destroyed, failed to retain, or simply refused to disclose the voting records … that would prove that black voters were victims of disparate treatment and had been unlawfully excluded from the rolls based on nothing more than their race,” D.C. federal Judge Randolph D. Moss, an Obama appointee, wrote.

Judges also identified a conflict between the DOJ’s claim to be enforcing election laws — which require voter lists to be continuously updated — and Title III, which bans any alteration of voter records. “The United States’s proposed interpretation of the CRA would therefore criminalize the same conduct that the [voting laws] require,” Maryland Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher, a Trump appointee, wrote. “This Court will not read [Title III] to produce such an absurd result.” Bissoon, the Pennsylvania judge, wrote the administration’s interpretation of Title III “does violence” to the law’s meaning.

To date, judges have dismissed 19 DOJ complaints that relied on the Civil Rights Act claim.

The Trump administration has appealed most of its losses to federal appeals courts and has said it will consider taking its fight to the Supreme Court. A Justice Department spokesperson issued a statement in response to ProPublica’s questions: “Our attorneys are skilled, principled advocates who argue every case honestly and in good faith. Disagreement with the government’s position is not evidence of bad faith. We look forward to making our case on appeal.”

The only appeal decided so far — from the Michigan case — backed the district judge who threw out the complaint. “Back then, the government used this power to ensure that everyone who had the right to vote could freely exercise that right,” the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote. “But today, the government invokes Title III for an inverse purpose — to ensure that some people have not voted.”

On Oct. 9, a U.S. district judge ruled that the Justice Department’s national effort to acquire and share state voter rolls was an illegal abuse of its authority. A Justice Department spokesperson said the department is “reviewing the ruling.”