A federal judge on Friday vacated the Trump Justice Department’s plan to check state voter rolls against immigration databases, blocking a push the administration cast as basic election integrity work.
U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, sitting in Washington, D.C., issued a 78-page ruling that struck down the policy and rejected the department’s claim of authority to demand complete state voter lists, compare them to federal citizenship records, and press states to drop voters it flagged as ineligible.
CBS News reported the order applies to voter files the Justice Department has already received and to files still tied up in litigation. The judge held the policy violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Privacy Act, and she warned federal databases can hold inaccuracies.
President Trump has argued that stronger federal scrutiny is needed to stop noncitizens from voting and to curb fraud. The department said the data would help states meet duties under the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act to keep rolls accurate.
Sooknanan framed the fight as a line the federal government may not cross.
"The challenged policy represents the federal government's attempt to decide who gets to vote. But Congress has left that authority where our Constitution has always placed it: with the states."
That language lands in the middle of a wider Trump administration drive for cleaner rolls ahead of the November midterms, including related fights over the Homeland Security SAVE citizenship-check system that reached the Supreme Court on state access.
Eighteen states fully cooperated with the Justice Department request for voter files. Most of the rest faced suits. One state settled. A CBS News analysis cited in the coverage found the department has lost almost all of those cases, and more than two dozen judges have refused to force states to turn over the lists.
The ruling does not leave states powerless. Sooknanan said as much in the order.
"Today's decision does not prevent the federal government from taking lawful steps to support states' efforts to maintain accurate voter rolls. Neither does it prevent states from maintaining their own voter rolls. And to state the obvious, the Court's decision does not pave the way for ineligible voters to vote in our elections."
She still vacated the policy outright, writing that it “cannot run roughshod over longstanding laws that were carefully crafted to protect the rights of the American people.”
In the same opinion she went further on the real-world effect she assigned to the program.
"Rather, the Court vacates a policy that has removed United States citizens from the voter rolls in their home states and risks disenfranchising many more, a policy that flies in the face of duly enacted laws designed to protect Americans."
Common Cause and individual voters brought the challenge. CEO Virginia Kase Solomón called the outcome “a victory for voters and yet another loss for the Department of Justice.” A department spokesperson said the agency is reviewing the decision.
This is not Sooknanan’s first run at the administration’s citizenship tools. In June she ruled that the overhauled Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, expanded to pull in Social Security Administration data, was created unlawfully. The Supreme Court temporarily paused that June order last month, and later coverage tracked how the high court cleared a path for SAVE verification in related proceedings.
Separate from the voter-roll demands, courts also blocked a Trump administration policy on how the Postal Service handles mail-in ballots. The Supreme Court declined the government’s request to let those rules take effect.
Federal law already bars states from systematic removal of ineligible voters within 90 days of an election. That clock means the practical bite of Friday’s order on the November midterms may be limited even if the legal fight continues. Parallel Justice Department efforts to restore verification tools have included a Supreme Court bid to revive a blocked voter-roll check.
The pattern is plain from the record in the package: a nationwide request for complete rolls, heavy state resistance, a stack of losses in the district courts, and now a D.C. order that empties the policy even for files already in hand. The administration’s stated aim was compliance with existing federal statutes on accurate registration lists and a check against noncitizen voting. The court answered that Congress put the core power with the states and that the chosen method broke the Administrative Procedure Act and the Privacy Act.
Taxpayers and lawful voters are the ones who live with swollen or error-ridden rolls when eligibility checks stall. Advocacy groups that sued celebrated the stop order. The Justice Department is left reviewing a loss that reaches files it already holds.
Broader administration talk on election safeguards has even left open harder options, including the kind of step discussed when Trump kept a national emergency declaration on the table for integrity shortfalls. Friday’s ruling does not end that larger debate. It does lock in one more judicial brake on a concrete tool the department tried to use.
Clean rolls protect lawful voters first. Courts that treat every federal eligibility check as a power grab leave states to police the problem alone, and leave the public to wonder who benefits when the comparisons never happen.
