A federal judge dismissed the Justice Department's lawsuit seeking New Jersey's unredacted voter registration data, even as the state reels from revelations that thousands of noncitizens were improperly added to its rolls and summoned for jury duty.
U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi, a Biden appointee, ruled Wednesday that the federal government cannot compel New Jersey to hand over its full voter registration list, including driver's license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. The ruling landed just one week after Governor Mikie Sherrill admitted that a "serious software error" in the state's Motor Vehicle System had mistakenly registered roughly 6,600 noncitizens to vote.
The timing could hardly be worse for a state already scrambling to explain how illegal immigrants ended up on its voter rolls, and how roughly 400 of them managed to cast ballots. Yet rather than cooperate with the federal government's effort to inspect the damage, New Jersey fought to keep its records sealed. And a federal judge agreed.
Quraishi based his decision on a narrow reading of Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the federal law the DOJ cited to demand access. In his written ruling, the judge concluded that the statute's inspection provision covers only records that "come into" election officers' possession, not databases the state built from scratch.
"The plain text of Title III applies only to records 'which come into' election officers' 'possession' and thus does not extend to New Jersey's computerized VRL [voter registration list], a document the State itself created."
Quraishi also cited privacy concerns for voters whose personal data would be exposed if the rolls were turned over unredacted. The dismissal was with prejudice, meaning the DOJ cannot refile the same claim under the same legal theory, though an appeal remains on the table. A DOJ spokesperson told the Washington Examiner, "We disagree with the court's decision and will appeal."
The DOJ had filed the lawsuit in February after New Jersey withheld voters' driver's license numbers and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers from registration lists provided to federal authorities. New Jersey was one of five states the DOJ sued for access, along with Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and West Virginia.
The ruling makes the DOJ's record in these cases 0 for 18 at the district court level, plus one appellate loss. Just The News reported that Quraishi himself cited more than a dozen similar rulings from other courts in reaching his conclusion. New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport framed the streak as vindication.
"Every court to consider the question, now totaling 17 district courts and a federal court of appeals, have unanimously rejected this clear federal overreach."
That quote, reported by Newsmax, captures the state's posture: cast the DOJ as the aggressor, not the state that let thousands of illegal immigrants onto its voter rolls.
Governor Sherrill disclosed last week that a Motor Vehicle Commission software failure between June 2023 and June 2024 mistakenly registered approximately 6,600 self-identified noncitizens to vote. She said fewer than 400 of those improperly registered individuals actually cast ballots. The state's Division of Elections is now removing ineligible voters from the rolls, and Sherrill said she immediately ordered an investigation after the error was discovered.
But the problem extends beyond voting. Multiple reports surfaced this week that roughly 75,000 noncitizens had been summoned for jury duty through state databases, a figure that suggests the contamination of New Jersey's public records runs far deeper than one software glitch. Republicans called for a wider investigation after those numbers emerged.
An unnamed company that provides identity-related security services for the state denied any wrongdoing connected to the software error. The specific mechanism behind the glitch, how, exactly, noncitizens who identified themselves as such were still registered, has not been publicly explained beyond Sherrill's "serious software error" label.
Even Democratic Senator Andy Kim acknowledged the scale of the failure. Fox News Digital reported his remarks:
"In New Jersey, we absolutely need to have accountability for what happened. It was just horrible. There was a big problem with that computer problem that they had. We need to try to address that going forward."
"Horrible" is a fair word for it. But accountability requires transparency, and the state just won a court ruling that shields its voter data from the one federal agency trying to look under the hood.
State Senator Declan O'Scanlon has called on New Jersey to halt its current automatic voter registration system entirely, launch an independent investigation into the noncitizen registrations, and consider federal oversight of the state's election infrastructure. Those demands put him at odds with a Democratic state government that has treated the episode as an isolated technical error rather than a systemic breakdown.
The RNC and New Jersey's state Republican Party obtained a removal form used by a noncitizen on the voter rolls to request unregistration, tangible evidence that at least some illegal immigrants recognized they had been improperly enrolled and tried to correct it themselves. That detail raises an uncomfortable question: how many others did not?
No information has surfaced about whether any of the roughly 400 noncitizens who cast ballots have been prosecuted or referred for prosecution. The DOJ has opened a separate review into the improper registrations, but the court's ruling now limits the federal government's ability to independently verify the scope of the problem using the state's own records.
So the picture stands like this: New Jersey admits thousands of noncitizens were registered. It admits hundreds voted. It admits tens of thousands received jury summonses. Its own Democratic senator calls the situation "horrible." And yet the state fought, and won, a legal battle to keep the federal government from examining its voter rolls.
Governor Sherrill frames the cleanup as swift and sufficient. Critics, including O'Scanlon, argue the state cannot credibly investigate itself when the scale of the error keeps growing with each week's revelations. The jury-duty figure alone suggests the motor voter problem may extend well beyond the 6,600 registrations Sherrill disclosed.
The DOJ's appeal will test whether a higher court reads Title III differently. But for now, New Jersey has won the right to keep its voter data behind a wall, at the precise moment when the public has every reason to demand a window.
When a state's own records show the system failed and the state still fights to keep those records from federal review, the word for that isn't "privacy protection." It's obstruction dressed in legalese.
