Federal judge rules against Trump DoJ’s policy of collecting state voter rolls

A federal judge has struck down a Justice Department practice of gathering unredacted voter lists from states and running them against a federal immigration database. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan ruled on Friday that the practice is unlawful, a loss for President Donald Trump, whose administration has stepped up scrutiny of non-citizen voting before the November midterms, when control of Congress is at stake, according to The Guardian.

Sooknanan found that the policy, created to carry out Trump's election integrity executive order, breaks privacy statutes and endangers voters' access to the ballot. She also concluded the department lacked authority, since Congress entrusted upkeep of registration lists to the states. Her 78-page opinion called the effort an attempt by the federal government to determine who may vote, though she said lawful federal help to states remains permissible.

The watchdog group Common Cause sued after the department began requesting data in May; around 18 states handed over sensitive personal details. The judge said the department mishandled those records and ignored the danger that unreliable citizenship data would prompt demands to purge eligible citizens. She cited two people wrongly dropped from rolls. The department did not immediately comment.

Summarized by PolitiKool from The Guardian’s reporting. Read the full story at The Guardian →