{"id":137739,"date":"2026-01-17T13:17:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T13:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/137739\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T13:17:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T13:17:15","slug":"federal-government-has-no-right-to-california-voters-sensitive-data-judge-rules-long-beach-post-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/137739\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal government has no right to California voters’ sensitive data, judge rules \u2022 Long Beach Post News"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was originally published by LAist<\/a> on Jan. 15, 2025.<\/p>\n

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the Trump administration is not entitled to personal information belonging to California\u2019s 23 million voters. Judge David O. Carter made the ruling.<\/p>\n

Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice sued California, along with 22 other states and Washington, D.C., for access to their full, unredacted voter files. That includes driver\u2019s license, social security numbers and other sensitive data.<\/p>\n

DOJ officials said they needed the data to assess whether states were properly maintaining their voter rolls and ensuring \u201conly American citizens are voting, only one time,\u201d as Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in a\u00a0social media post<\/a>\u00a0in December.\u00a0<\/p>\n

California refused, citing state and federal privacy law. Only a handful of states have complied with the government\u2019s request for their full voter files, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which has been\u00a0tracking the issue<\/a>\u00a0nationwide.<\/p>\n

What did the judge say?<\/p>\n

In Judge Carter\u2019s ruling, he wrote that amassing sensitive information at the federal level would have a chilling effect on voter registration, which would lead to decreased turnout \u201cas voters fear that their information is being used for some inappropriate or unlawful purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cThis risk threatens the right to vote which is the cornerstone of American democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

LAist emailed a request for comment to a spokesperson for the Department of Justice but has not yet received a response.<\/p>\n

Reaction to the ruling<\/p>\n

Jenny Farrell, executive director of the League of Women Voters of California, applauded the decision. The group had joined California in opposing the government\u2019s data request.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aWe think that voters should never have to choose between their privacy interests and the right to participate in our democracy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor and former Department of Justice employee said, \u201cThe court did what we thought the court should do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Levitt and a group of other former DOJ employees had filed an amicus brief in the case, siding with California.<\/p>\n

In a news release, California Secretary of State Shirley Weber wrote: \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<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next?<\/p>\n

The DOJ\u2019s lawsuits against other states are still making their way through the courts.<\/p>\n

During a hearing in the case in December, Judge Carter said he anticipated his eventual ruling \u2014 whichever way it went \u2014 would be appealed, and that a final decision on the issue could rest with the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article was originally published by LAist on Jan. 15, 2025. A federal judge ruled Thursday that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-137739","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-long-beach","9":"tag-long-beach-headlines","10":"tag-long-beach-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}