{"id":519466,"date":"2026-01-16T03:50:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T03:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/519466\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T03:50:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T03:50:12","slug":"judge-dismisses-doj-lawsuit-demanding-california-voter-rolls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/519466\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge dismisses DOJ lawsuit demanding California voter rolls"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit<\/a> demanding California turn over its voter rolls, calling the request \u201cunprecedented and illegal\u201d and accusing the federal government of trying to \u201cabridge the right of many Americans to cast their ballots.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, a Clinton appointee based in Santa Ana, questioned the Justice Department\u2019s motivations and called its lawsuit demanding voter data from California Secretary of State Shirley Weber not just an overreach into state-run elections, but a threat to American democracy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe centralization of this information by the federal government would have a chilling effect on voter registration which would inevitably lead to decreasing voter turnout as voters fear that their information is being used for some inappropriate or unlawful purpose,\u201d Carter wrote. \u201cThis risk threatens the right to vote which is the cornerstone of American democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carter wrote that the \u201ctaking of democracy does not occur in one fell swoop; it is chipped away piece by piece until there is nothing left,\u201d and that the Justice Department\u2019s lawsuit was \u201cone of these cuts that imperils all Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Thursday.<\/p>\n

In a video she posted to the social media platform X<\/a> earlier Thursday, Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon \u2014 who heads the Justice Department\u2019s Civil Rights Division \u2014 said she was proud of her office\u2019s efforts to \u201cclean up the voter rolls nationally,\u201d including by suing states for their data.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are going to touch every single state and finish this project,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Weber, who is California\u2019s top elections official, said in a written statement that she is \u201centrusted with ensuring that California\u2019s state election laws are enforced \u2014 including state laws that protect the privacy of California\u2019s data.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI will continue to uphold my promise to Californians to protect our democracy, and I will continue to challenge this administration\u2019s disregard for the rule of law and our right to vote,\u201d Weber said.<\/p>\n

Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s office called the decision another example of \u201cTrump and his administration losing to California\u201d \u2014 one day after another court upheld California\u2019s congressional redistricting plan under Proposition 50<\/a>, which the Trump administration also challenged in court after state voters passed it overwhelmingly in November.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department sued Weber in September after she refused to hand over detailed voter information for some 23 million Californians, alleging that she was unlawfully preventing federal authorities from ensuring state compliance with federal voting regulations and safeguarding federal elections against fraud. <\/p>\n

It separately sued Weber\u2019s counterparts in various other states who also declined the department\u2019s requests for their states\u2019 voter rolls.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit followed an executive order by President Trump<\/a> in March that purported to require voters to provide proof of citizenship and ordered states to disregard mail ballots not received by election day. It also followed years of allegations by Trump, made without evidence, that voting in California has been hampered by widespread fraud and voting by noncitizens \u2014 part of his broader and equally unsupported claim that the 2020 presidental election was stolen from him.<\/p>\n

In announcing the lawsuit, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said in September that \u201cclean voter rolls are the foundation of free and fair elections,\u201d and that the Justice Department was going to ensure that they exist nationwide.<\/p>\n

Weber denounced the lawsuit at the time as a \u201cfishing expedition and pretext for partisan policy objectives,\u201d and as \u201can unprecedented intrusion unsupported by law or any previous practice or policy of the U.S. Department of Justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Justice Department demanded a \u201ccurrent electronic copy of California\u2019s computerized statewide voter registration list\u201d; lists of \u201call duplicate registration records in Imperial, Los Angeles, Napa, Nevada, San Bernardino, Siskiyou, and Stanislaus counties\u201d; a \u201clist of all duplicate registrants who were removed from the statewide voter registration list\u201d; and the dates of their removals.<\/p>\n

It also demanded a list of all registrations that had been canceled due to voter deaths; an explanation for a recent decline in the recorded number of \u201cinactive\u201d voters in California; and a list of \u201call registrations, including date of birth, driver\u2019s license number, and last four digits of Social Security Number, that were canceled due to non-citizenship of the registrant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carter, in his ruling Thursday, took particular issue with the Justice Department\u2019s reliance on federal civil rights laws to make its case.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Department of Justice seeks to use civil rights legislation which was enacted for an entirely different purpose to amass and retain an unprecedented amount of confidential voter data. This effort goes far beyond what Congress intended when it passed the underlying legislation,\u201d Carter wrote. <\/p>\n

Carter wrote that the legislation in question \u2014 including Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 \u2014 was passed to defend Black Americans\u2019 voting rights in the face of \u201cpersistent voter suppression\u201d and to \u201ccombat the effects of discriminatory and unfair registration laws that cheapened the right to vote.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carter found that the Justice Department provided \u201cno explanation for why unredacted voter files for millions of Californians, an unprecedented request, was necessary\u201d for the Justice Department to investigate the alleged problems it claims, and that the executive branch simply has no power to demand such data all at once without explanation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit demanding California turn over its voter rolls,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":519467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[5672,1582,276,231374,9109,35132,7837,231373,15428,2961,11804,224,5337,43855,31590,290,2450,277,134861],"class_list":{"0":"post-519466","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-administration","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-california-voter-roll","12":"tag-californians","13":"tag-carter","14":"tag-democracy","15":"tag-doj-lawsuit","16":"tag-justice-department","17":"tag-la","18":"tag-list","19":"tag-los-angeles","20":"tag-losangeles","21":"tag-request","22":"tag-right","23":"tag-state","24":"tag-thursday","25":"tag-trump","26":"tag-weber"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115902744279086319","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}