Opposition to the Trump Justice Department’s request is bipartisan. Some Republican states are fighting to protect voters’ personal information, and seven of the 15 district judges who have denied the requests are Trump appointees.
Supreme Court allows late arrival of mail-in ballots
The Supreme Court upheld Mississippi’s rule to count mail-in ballots received within five days of Election Day, blocking President Trump’s attack on mail-in voting.
WASHINGTON – A court has unanimously rejected a Justice Department argument requiring access to state voter rolls as President Donald Trump fights for greater federal control over elections.
The department has lost all 16 previous federal court decisions over requests for voter lists that include personal information such as addresses, dates of birth, driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers, which local officials argue would create an “abundant surveillance tool.”
Democrats are not alone in battling the Republican administration in dozens of lawsuits across the country. Republican officials in states such as Idaho, Kentucky, Utah and West Virginia also opposed the request. And seven of the 15 federal district judges who ruled against him were appointed by Trump.
At issue in the case is whether the federal government can police state voter lists and possibly create a national database as part of President Trump’s efforts to prevent non-citizens from voting. But the justices unanimously ruled that the states, not the federal government, conduct elections.
Additionally, some states argue that this unprecedented attempt at federal election oversight is an attempt to solve a problem that barely exists. In his July 16 White House speech, President Trump continued to complain about the security of elections, including non-referendum votes. But judges, election experts and even Republican state officials have said the allegations of non-referendum voting are “inaccurate” and “not a systemic problem.”
James Craig, an attorney with Republican Attorney General Raul Labrador’s office, sent a letter to federal officials on July 10 urging them to drop the lawsuit, saying, “Idaho is committed to supporting President Trump’s goal of ensuring that only American citizens can register and physically vote in Idaho.” In response to the federal government’s offer of assistance, Craig suggested that authorities “stop threatening our friends in Idaho.”
The court’s ruling is urgent as the Nov. 3 midterm elections approach and a 1993 law prohibits widespread purging of voter rolls in the 90 days before an election or after Aug. 5. The two appeals courts agreed to expedite consideration of the lower court’s decision.
“The Department of Justice is committed to ensuring that elections are accurate, fair, and secure, and that starts with creating clean and up-to-date voter rolls,” Harmeet Dhillon, who is leading the case as director of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, told USA TODAY. “We are confident in the legal basis of these lawsuits and will continue to pursue them vigorously, including through appeals.”
Voter list battle started due to Trump’s executive order
In March 2025, President Trump signed an executive order directing the Justice Department to prioritize preventing noncitizens from voting. The president said there was an “inevitable obligation” to secure elections by taking measures such as ensuring citizenship for voters.
Mr. Dillon then began requiring states to submit their voter rolls to check for inaccurate information, such as citizenship of names and who moved or died. She cited the Civil Rights Act of 1960 to justify the name and identifying information request. And she cited the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which required states to ensure only eligible voters appeared on voter lists.
“Federal law requires states to make reasonable efforts to maintain accurate registration lists, and if a state fails to do so, the department will act to enforce that obligation,” Dillon said in a statement.
The administration is attempting to match state voter lists to the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Eligibility Verification (SAVE) database, but a judge has blocked the database for this purpose, calling it “inaccurate” and “unreliable.”
Election experts said the Constitution gives states the power to administer elections, and the 1974 Privacy Act is intended to prevent the executive branch from sharing personal information about voters as required.
“The Department of Justice has no authority to purge voter rolls. Not at all,” Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a former Justice Department official in the Obama and Biden administrations, told USA TODAY. “The courts are not buying what the Justice Department is selling.”
So far, 23 Republican-led states have provided voter information. But officials in many states refused, citing privacy laws that prohibit the sharing of personal information and a lack of federal authority over the list. The Justice Department subsequently sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for the unredacted list.
Judge appointed by President Trump rules against administration
15 U.S. District Judges (9 Republican-appointed, 7 Trump-appointed) and 6 Judgesth The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the department’s request as illegal.
“The government’s request is unprecedented and unlawful,” U.S. District Judge David Carter in Los Angeles said in one of his earlier rulings, handed down on Jan. 15. “It is not the power of the executive branch or this court to authorize the use of civil rights law as a means to waive the privacy rights of millions of Americans. That power rests only with Congress.”
The constitution states that states determine “the time, place, and manner of holding elections.”
“As a former Justice Department attorney, the idea of going 0-15 in a case is something I can’t even wrap my head around,” David Becker, a former senior trial attorney in the Justice Department’s civil rights division’s voting division, told USA TODAY. “It’s just amazing.”
However, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 15 that most cases are still on appeal and some judges support some of the Justice Department’s positions.
For example, U.S. District Judge Kent Wetherell in Florida ruled on July 7 that four Republican-led states can use the SAVE database to check the citizenship of voters. His decision contradicts a June 22 decision by U.S. District Judge Sparkle Suknanan in Washington, D.C., to block the use of an “unreliable” database.
Some Republican election officials express their stance
Republican election officials in a handful of states are also among those fighting the Justice Department’s demands.
Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams argued that requiring states to hand over personally identifying information about millions of voters would turn a “little-used provision of the 1960 Civil Rights Act” into a “pervasive surveillance tool.”
Utah Lt. Gov. Deirdre Henderson, who oversees the state’s elections, called the department’s records request “illegal.”
West Virginia Secretary of State Chris Warner said he agreed with the goal of cracking down on voter rolls, but said handing over sensitive voter data would violate state law. He noted that the judge found there was “no indication” that there was a problem maintaining West Virginia’s voter registration list.
In December, Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane said he would authorize the Justice Department to request election-related records from federal authorities under civil rights law. But in February, McGlenn said he learned from another lawsuit that personally identifiable information was sent outside of authorized channels.
The Justice Department acknowledged in a Jan. 16 court filing that members of a Trump advisory group called the Department of Government Efficiency accessed Social Security Administration information in March 2025, contrary to previous denials. The Justice Department said in a filing that an anonymous political advocacy group asked two members of DOGE to analyze state voter rolls with the goal of “detecting voter fraud and overturning election results in certain states.”
“While we appreciate the Department’s assurance that Idaho’s data will be protected, we cannot take the obvious risks now without a clear legal obligation to do so,” McGlenn wrote.
Trump administration says it’s fighting fraud
Despite President Trump’s calls for states to check their voter rolls for fraud, studies have found few instances of non-citizens voting. Perhaps this is because the documents needed to vote are now more vulnerable to criminal prosecution.
“The idea that noncitizens are voting in large numbers is a fiction,” said Levitt, a former Justice Department elections lawyer. “You have left a trail of criminal activity and will be discovered in the future.”
Federal authorities cite several recent examples in pending litigation.
Two Pakistani men have been indicted in New Jersey for allegedly registering to vote in the 2020 election and identifying themselves as U.S. citizens when they cast a ballot. The Australian lawful permanent resident was charged in Louisiana with false statements and voter fraud in 2022 and 2024. A Chinese student at the University of Michigan was also charged with using his student ID to register to vote and vote in the 2024 election before jumping bail and returning to China, officials said.
Michigan’s U.S. Attorney Jerome Gorgon said of the Chinese suspects: “Illegal voting is a serious crime that casts an election into question and disenfranchises citizens by weakening their power at the polls.”
Following President Trump’s July 16 speech, the Department of Homeland Security announced that more than 250,000 noncitizens were illegally registered to vote in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada. But the department has not documented how it arrived at that estimate.
On July 17, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin sent a letter to election officials in four states urging them to check their voter rolls in the federal SAVE database. At a press conference, he threatened criminal penalties for officials who do not secure elections.
“If an election official provides the information necessary to secure an election and chooses not to do so, that person could be held liable for fines, fines, and even jail time,” Marin said.
Earlier this month, Mr. Dillon sent a letter to election officials in all 50 states, threatening to criminally investigate them if it is discovered that non-citizens voted in the 2026 election. Dillon said in a social media video on July 8 that he was sending federal monitors to six states: Arizona, Michigan, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Virginia.
“Intentional acts aimed at diluting the public’s vote may also violate federal law,” Dillon said.
Rep. Henderson, R-Utah, responded to the “threat of criminal prosecution” on social media on July 7, calling it “a truly bizarre action by a federal agency that is supposed to protect civil rights.”
States say they are already cracking down on voter rolls.
States have already documented the extent to which they monitor their voter rolls and how small the problem of noncitizen voting is.
In Utah, a yearlong audit of voter registration released in May found that 27 noncitizens out of more than 2 million voters were removed from the voter rolls. Eight noncitizens voted in the 2020 election, and four each voted in the 2018 and 2024 elections.
In Idaho, state officials worked with federal authorities to verify the citizenship of 1.1 million registered voters ahead of the 2024 election. State authorities referred 34 people to prosecutors for criminal investigations related to non-citizen registration and voting, but none of them voted in that year’s primary or general election.
In August 2025, an additional 15 cases were referred to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for possible prosecution.
Texas began regular audits of county voter rolls in 2021. After the 2022 election, an audit of Harris County, which includes Houston and has about 2.6 million registered voters, removed 1,136 noncitizens. After the 2024 election, an audit of Valverde County, which is located along the border with Mexico and has 30,000 registered voters, found that one noncitizen had been excluded.
Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry announced in September that a check of the state’s voter list from the 1980s against DHS’ SAVE database found that 390 noncitizens had registered to vote, and 79 had voted in at least one election. The state has approximately 2.9 million voters.
“Let me be clear: illegal registration and voting by noncitizens is not a systemic problem in Louisiana,” Landry, a Republican, said.
