By Ginika Igboke
A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed the Department of Justice’s lawsuit seeking access to Michigan’s voter rolls, ruling that the department lacks legal authority to obtain the information.
The DOJ filed the lawsuit in September 2025 after Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson declined to provide voter list maintenance records and the state’s voter registration list to federal officials.
In her order, U.S. District Judge Hala Jarbou said Michigan is not required under federal election laws to comply with the DOJ’s demands. She rejected the department’s attempt to use discovery to obtain voter data without alleging any specific legal violations.
“There is simply no basis in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for the United States’s suggestion that it can file a Help America Vote Act claim, allege no violations of HAVA, and obtain information to support its as-yet-nonexistent claim via discovery,” Jarbou wrote.
The judge also pointed to statutory language indicating that states are required to disclose information about how they maintain voter registration lists, but not the lists themselves. While that distinction may appear unusual, she said it reflects congressional intent.
“Perhaps this result seems odd, but this oddity disappears when one considers that state voter registration lists were often already subject to public disclosure under state law when the NVRA was enacted,” Jarbou wrote.
She further noted that federal law applies to voter registration applications, not to the compiled voter lists maintained by states.
“If the distinction between voter registration applications and voter registration lists is overly pedantic, it is a pedantic distinction made by Congress, and it is Congress’s prerogative to make distinctions that may seem unnecessary decades after the statute’s passage,” she said.
The Michigan ruling follows similar decisions in Oregon and California, where federal judges also blocked DOJ efforts to obtain voter records. Those cases have drawn criticism from congressional Democrats, who have argued the lawsuits represent attempts by the Trump administration to exert greater federal control over elections.
In Oregon, U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai indicated last month that he would dismiss the DOJ’s case, citing concerns raised by state officials over federal privacy laws and the handling of sensitive voter information. In California, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ruled in mid-January that granting the DOJ access to voter data would be “unprecedented and illegal.”
“The Department of Justice seeks to use civil rights legislation enacted for an entirely different purpose to amass and retain an unprecedented amount of confidential voter data,” Carter wrote. “This effort goes far beyond what Congress intended.”
In September, the DOJ announced plans to sue multiple states—including Michigan, California, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania—arguing that some states were failing to properly maintain accurate voter registration lists.
“Clean voter rolls are the foundation of free and fair elections,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said at the time. “Every state has a responsibility to ensure that voter registration records are accurate, accessible, and secure.”
The DOJ has filed lawsuits against at least 23 states and the District of Columbia as part of its broader effort to access voter data, contending that such access is necessary to ensure compliance with federal election laws. In December, the department argued that its actions are authorized under the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and are intended to prevent states from undermining the integrity of elections.
Michigan election officials did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
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