Two more judges reject Trump DOJ's voter roll grab
Harmeet Dhillon is now 0-8, and more in tonight's legal roundup.
Underneath the main story, tonight’s legal roundup includes developments about the SPLC and another collapsed Trump DOJ prosecution in Chicago.
Extending an 0-8 losing streak in nationwide litigation, the Trump Justice Department lost another effort to hoover up sensitive voter roll information in two more states: Maine and Wisconsin.
The back-to-back rulings represent an ongoing rebuke of Donald Trump’s former election denialist lawyer turned Justice Department Civil Rights Division Chief Harmeet Dhillon, who filed 30 lawsuits across the country demanding voter rolls from 29 states and Washington, D.C. At least 48 states have received some form of demand for the information.
Possible Action Item: Keep Them Honest
Find out whether your state has complied with the Trump DOJ’s voter data demand here, and let officials know what you think about their decision.
Continuing the bipartisan judicial rebuke, the latest defeats came from U.S. District Judge Lance Walker, a Trump appointee in Maine, and U.S. District Judge James Peterson, an Obama appointee in Wisconsin.
“Maine, along with many other states, historically have agreed to the Department of Justice’s requests for access to their voter rolls,” Walker wrote in the first lines of his ruling. “Comity between coequal sovereigns is the hallmark of a thrumming republic, so it should not surprise the reader, though in these days it likely will, to learn that federal government curiosity in state voter rolls would ordinarily be worked out through cooperation and negotiation in observance of the delicate balance of sovereign authorities, thereby avoiding a clash between sovereigns.”
Unlike previous federal demands for state voter roll data, the Trump Justice Department’s effort comes in the context of an ongoing campaign to rewrite the history of the 2020 election, led by one of the attorneys who pushed baseless fraud claims.
In addition, the Trump Justice Department’s dragnet reached the majority of U.S. states, and certain GOP-dominated states like Texas voluntarily shared broad swaths of voter data.
Some of that information, as Judge Peterson noted, could be invasive.
“Further, voter registration lists are not necessarily simple compilations of voter registration applications,” the Wisconsin ruling states, noting that Michigan’s voting list “contains information about individuals’ voting histories.”
Dhillon claimed that she was entitled to the voter rolls under the Civil Rights Act, a proposition that has been unanimously rejected to date.
The Trump Justice Department didn’t respond to an email requesting comment.
Below the Paywall:
* Sixteen state AGs urge three major donor funds to keep supporting the SPLC.
* Trump DOJ’s prosecution of the “Broadview Six” collapses in Chicago.
