Washington — A divided federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that the Justice Department cannot obtain Michigan’s voter registration list containing sensitive personal information about the state’s voters.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit became the first appellate court to address the Trump administration’s push to secure unredacted voter rolls from more than two dozen states. The case before the court centered on the Justice Department’s demand for Michigan’s data.
In a 2-1 ruling, the 6th Circuit found that a provision of federal civil rights law does not give the government access to Michigan’s full voter registration list, which includes registered voters’ names, birth dates, driver’s license numbers, partial Social Security numbers and other information.
Judge Andre Mathis, writing for the majority, said the 1960 law gave the federal government “power to ensure that everyone who had the right to vote could freely exercise that right. But today, the government invokes Title III for an inverse purpose — to ensure that some people have not voted.” Judge Guy Cole Jr. joined the majority opinion, while Judge John Nalbandian dissented.
The Justice Department initially requested copies of statewide voter registration lists from nearly every state and the District of Columbia last summer. The department said it needed the records to evaluate compliance with voter list-maintenance provisions under two federal laws: the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, along with officials in 30 states and D.C., declined to provide unredacted voter rolls. The Justice Department then sued the states, seeking court orders to compel the release of the information. Benson did turn over the public version of Michigan’s voter registration list but maintained that the federal government lacked authority to demand confidential voter data.
To date, nine district courts have dismissed cases the Justice Department brought against states, including the Justice Department’s case in Michigan. In that dispute, U.S. District Judge Hala Jarbou ruled that the federal laws cited by the Trump administration do not authorize the government to obtain the records. She also cautioned that reading the National Voter Registration Act to require disclosure of private information provided during voter registration “would potentially cause the statute to impose an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote guaranteed by the First Amendment.”
Jarbou was appointed to the federal bench by Mr. Trump during his first term.
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The 6th Circuit affirmed the district court’s ruling, with the two judges in the majority agreeing that “Title III’s narrow text cannot withstand the weight of the government’s broad request.”
Since Mr. Trump took office for his second term, his administration has undertaken sweeping efforts to overhaul U.S. elections as Republicans fight to maintain control of Congress in November’s midterm elections. The president has signed two executive orders that sought to impose new requirements for mail ballots and voter registration, but they have come under scrutiny in the courts.
Earlier Wednesday, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled key provisions of the directive signed by Mr. Trump last year were unconstitutional and permanently blocked their implementation nationwide. One of the measures sought to require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, while another imposed conditions on federal funds to specific states not counting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day.
