A United States federal judge has ruled that the Department of Justice acted unlawfully when it sought and utilized state voter rolls to cross-check them against a federal immigration database in an effort to identify voters it considered ineligible. The decision represents a significant legal defeat for the administration of President Donald Trump and its broader efforts to expand federal oversight of state-run elections ahead of critical midterm contests, as Republicans look to shore up their control of Congress.<\/p>\n
In a comprehensive 78-page ruling issued on Friday, US District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan sided with the watchdog group Common Cause and other plaintiffs who had challenged the administration\u2019s data-collection and cross-referencing policies. Judge Sooknanan concluded that the executive branch had heavily understated the substantial risk of wrongly removing eligible, registered American citizens from voter rolls due to known inaccuracies and limitations within the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database.<\/p>\n
"The challenged policy represents the federal government\u2019s attempt to decide who gets to vote," Judge Sooknanan wrote in her opinion, emphasizing that the United States Constitution and federal statute have historically left that core authority to the individual states. <\/p>\n
In response to the judicial setback, the Justice Department stated that it was currently reviewing the ruling and determining its next steps. Meanwhile, civil rights advocates praised the decision as a vital protection for the franchise. Ming Cheung, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union\u2019s Voting Rights Project, said the ruling made it unmistakably clear that the federal administration could not manipulate federal resources to disrupt elections or jeopardize the fundamental rights of voters.<\/p>\n
"The Trump administration has repeatedly taken extreme measures to interfere with how elections are run, undermine confidence in the results, and create confusion," Cheung said in a statement following the release of the opinion.<\/p>\n
The legal battle stems from directives issued last year by President Trump instructing the Justice Department to crack down on alleged voting by individuals ineligible to cast ballots, despite extensive empirical research demonstrating that voter fraud remains exceedingly rare in United States elections. Following those directives, the Justice Department issued sweeping demands for unredacted voter registration rolls from nearly all 50 states, requesting sensitive personal information on millions of registered voters.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, 18 states\u2014predominantly led by Republican officials\u2014complied with the federal government’s demands. The Justice Department subsequently cross-checked the data provided by these states against the SAVE database, flagging individuals identified within the records as noncitizens for potential removal from active voter rolls. <\/p>\n
However, Judge Sooknanan noted in her ruling that the SAVE database is prone to containing outdated citizenship records and bureaucratic discrepancies, creating a severe and unacceptable hazard of misidentifying naturalized US citizens and stripping them of their right to vote. <\/p>\n
Beyond the collection of data from compliant states, the Justice Department has also aggressively litigated against jurisdictions resisting the federal demands. The department has filed lawsuits against 30 states and the District of Columbia over their refusal to hand over sensitive voter data. Out of those legal challenges, 26 cases have already been dismissed by various courts.<\/p>\n
Friday’s ruling is the latest chapter in ongoing legal skirmishes over federal access to state election infrastructure. In a separate case adjudicated in June, Judge Sooknanan blocked the broader, expanded use of the SAVE database for routine voter roll checks\u2014an order that was subsequently and temporarily paused by the US Supreme Court last month.<\/p>\n
Legal analysts point out that federal law explicitly bars systematic voter roll purges during the 90-day window immediately preceding a federal election, a statutory constraint that could potentially limit the immediate practical effects of Friday’s ruling ahead of the upcoming November 3 vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A United States federal judge has ruled that the Department of Justice acted unlawfully when it sought and utilized state voter rolls to cross-check them against a federal immigration database in an effort to identify voters it considered ineligible. The decision represents a significant legal defeat for the administration of President Donald Trump and its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":2540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4126,460,500,6,286,4128,2680,1527,7,3068,5,4125,2681,4127,4],"class_list":["post-2541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global-news","tag-blocks","tag-check","tag-cross","tag-current-events","tag-data","tag-database","tag-department","tag-federal","tag-global","tag-immigration","tag-international","tag-judge","tag-justice","tag-voter","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tcjsj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tcjsj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tcjsj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tcjsj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tcjsj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tcjsj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tcjsj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tcjsj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tcjsj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tcjsj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}