A federal judge has told President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) that it cannot have Georgia’s unredacted statewide voter registration list, handing the administration its 26th consecutive legal blow in its effort to obtain detailed voter records from different states. District Judge Victoria Marie Calvert on Wednesday ruled that the DOJ has no right to demand Georgia’s unredacted list, which includes data on people’s voting history and driver’s license and Social Security numbers. Georgia is one of 30 states the Trump administration has sued to try and get hold of their unredacted voter rolls, arguing that it needs these records to assess whether states are complying with election rules and regulations, including voter-list maintenance.
Dhillon said when he announced its case against Georgia in January. In April, Dhillon spoke out against states “choosing to fight us in court rather than show their work.” The DOJ told Newsweek it is reviewing the ruling and "will likely appeal." Calvert, a nominee of former President Joe Biden, ruled in favor of Georgia, which argued that state privacy laws mean it cannot share people’s personal details–such as their birthdays, Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers and email addresses. Georgia said it could only share its already publicly available list, saying this provided “all fields that may be publicly disclosed under law.” The DOJ argued that certain federal laws–the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and the Civil Rights Act (CRA)–override Georgia’s voter-privacy protections.
But Calvert disagreed, saying “NVRA does not require the disclosure of sensitive information, and Congress could not have intended, when it passed HAVA, nearly four decades after Title III of the CRA, to allow [the DOJ] to use the CRA to access sensitive information when the CRA itself does not entitle Plaintiff to this kind of information.” She said the DOJ had not “not demonstrated how Georgia’s voter privacy law conflicts with Title III of the CRA, the NVRA, or HAVA.” Trump has repeatedly claimed that election fraud is taking place across the U.S., including non-citizens being allowed to vote in some places, and has pushed for stricter regulations monitoring who is allowed to vote, including backing the SAVE America Act which would introduce nationwide voter identification requirements. The DOJ said in its complaint against Georgia that it wants unredacted voter lists “to evaluate Georgia’s compliance with the list maintenance provisions of HAVA and the NVRA, and if appropriate, to bring an enforcement action.” It said having access to someone’s driver’s license number or their Social Security number “is necessary to identify duplicate registration records, registrants who have moved, registrants who have died, and those who are not eligible to vote in federal elections.” “The Justice Department will continue to fulfill its oversight role dutifully, neutrally, and transparently wherever Americans vote in federal elections,” said Dhillon said in April. The DOJ has lost in the District of Columbia and the 24 states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
Courts have given different reasons in each case but have rejected the DOJ’s claims of statutory authority to obtain the information in all of them. It is important to note that these rulings are not necessarily the final result–the DOJ has filed multiple appeals. Contact Newsweek editor on this story: Edward Pearcey.
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