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Federal judge rules DOJ's transfer of voter data to ICE illegal, three weeks before midterms
D.C. federal judge Sparkle Sooknanan ruled the Justice Department's handover of state voter rolls to Homeland Security Investigations violated the Privacy Act; at least 16 states voluntarily shared voter data.
Why it matters
Three weeks before the November midterm elections, D.C. federal Judge Sparkle Sooknanan ruled late last week that the Trump administration's transfer of sensitive personal information on millions of voters to Homeland Security Investigations (HSI, a sub-agency of Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was illegal — the latest rebuke in more than a year of legal battles between the Justice Department and dozens of states and voting rights groups.
The ruling
Sooknanan wrote that the Justice Department's legal arguments suggested that "every American citizen who registers to vote is the subject of a voter fraud investigation underway in the (Justice Department's) Civil Rights Division simply because they registered to vote." She ruled the transfers to ICE violated the Privacy Act, which restricts how federal agencies collect and share individuals' data, and warned the department cannot evade the act's free speech protections by launching a "dragnet" investigation of the whole country.
How much data changed hands
The Justice Department has lost at least 23 district court lawsuits seeking to force states to hand over voter data. Even so, at least 16 states voluntarily provided their voter rolls, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming. Internal HSI reports released last week by the watchdog Democracy Forward show the agency received nearly 51 million Justice Department records as part of its "election integrity" investigations.
Reactions and next steps
The lawsuit was filed in April by the voting rights group Common Cause and a group of voters. Common Cause president and CEO Virginia Kase Solomón called it "a victory for voters." Justice Department spokesperson Kiersten Pels said only that the department was "reviewing the ruling." The DOJ on Monday announced voter fraud charges against 16 individuals, including 13 noncitizens. Separately, Maryland federal Judge Paula Xinis is set to decide the fate of the "state citizenship lists" from Trump's March executive order; a 30-day notice requirement effectively keeps the lists out of states' hands before the midterms.
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