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Trump DOJ suffers first appeals court loss - after nine lower court failures - in floundering voter roll crusade
Democracy Docket • • general
Key Points:
- A Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals panel affirmed the dismissal of the DOJ's lawsuit seeking Michigan's unredacted voter registration database, marking the Trump administration's first appellate loss in its efforts to obtain sensitive state voter rolls.
- This ruling is binding precedent for similar DOJ lawsuits in the Sixth Circuit, including a pending case in Kentucky, making further dismissals likely.
- The court rejected DOJ's use of Title III of the 1960 Civil Rights Act, originally intended to protect voting rights, to demand voter data to investigate alleged improper voting, stating that the law does not apply to state-created voter files.
- The judges criticized DOJ's interpretation of the law and its late submission of a self-issued legal memo, emphasizing that DOJ failed to meet statutory requirements for demand letters under Title III.
- The decision provides a significant legal precedent for states resisting federal demands for unredacted voter data, with multiple appeals pending in other states where DOJ has lost at the district court level.
