Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
A federal judge dismissed Saturday a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit seeking<\/a> to obtain Pennsylvania\u2019s entire, unredacted, voter-registration database.<\/p>\n President Donald Trump<\/a> administration\u2019s doesn\u2019t have the legal authority to demand the \u201chighly sensitive\u201d information, wrote Cathy Bissoon, Pittsburgh\u2019s federal court chief judge. And while the Justice Department couldn\u2019t articulate the \u201cbasis and purpose\u201d for its request, Bissoon said, the administration has been \u201csay[ing] the quite parts out loud.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cPublic statements from government officials reveal its intentions: to create a nationwide voter-database, for potential weaponization in future elections; as a \u2018fishing expedition,\u2019 hoped to advance unsubstantiated claims of non-citizen voting; and as a tool for immigration enforcement,\u201d the Barrack Obama-appointed judge wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Justice Department sued more than half of the states in the union for their voter-related records. Bissoon\u2019s ruling marks the Trump administration\u2019s 10th defeat in a district court, which the judge notes with a positive spin. <\/p>\n \u201cThe administration\u2019s demands have yielded one unexpected benefit, namely, bipartisan agreement,\u201d Bissoon said. \u201cFive of the district judges are Trump appointees.\u201d<\/p>\n The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n \u201cNo matter what the Trump Administration tries next, we\u2019re going to stand up to protect Pennsylvanians\u2019 right to privacy \u2014 and our fundamental right to vote,\u201c Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a post on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Trump administration sued in September after Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt<\/a> refused to turn over all voter-registration data<\/a> \u2014 which includes sensitive information such as Social Security numbers \u2014 from the November 2022 election through the 2024 presidential election. <\/p>\n Schmidt, who previously served as the lone Republican on Philadelphia\u2019s election board<\/a>, responded to DOJ\u2019s August request<\/a> by offering to share the redacted public voter file. There is no precedent to justify turning over the unredacted information, Schmidt argued, and releasing the sensitive files would violate state law. <\/p>\n \u201cThis request, and reported efforts to collect broad data on millions of Americans, represent a concerning attempt to expand the federal government\u2019s role in our country\u2019s electoral process,\u201d Schmidt said in his response to the DOJ.<\/p>\n The federal government sued Schmidt, invoking federal voter election law and \u201cironically,\u201d according to Bissoon, the Civil Rights Act of 1960. <\/p>\n \u201cEvery state has a responsibility to ensure that voter registration records are accurate, accessible, and secure \u2014 states that don\u2019t fulfill that obligation will see this Department of Justice in court,” then-Attorney General Pam Bondi<\/a> said in a statement announcing the suit<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Trump administration\u2019s push to obtain the unredacted voter rolls has alarmed multiple civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the League of Women Voters. <\/p>\n Far from boosting the public\u2019s confidence in election integrity, the request seems like an attempt to undermine it, Lauren Cristella, the president of the Committee of Seventy, a Philly-based civic engagement group, previously told the Inquirer.<\/a> <\/p>\n \u201cThey are insinuating that there\u2019s something wrong,\u201d Cristella said. \u201cEven though there is no credible evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n Others raised privacy concerns over sharing sensitive information of millions of voters nationwide. <\/p>\n The Trump administration\u2019s argument did not find much purchase in federal courts throughout the country so far. Bissoon joins district judges in Arizona, California, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Rhode Island, Oregon, and Wisconsin in dismissing the lawsuits, according to the Brennan Center for Justice<\/a>, a legal nonprofit affiliated with New York University. <\/p>\n