{"id":230414,"date":"2026-06-28T16:49:06","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T16:49:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/230414\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T16:49:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T16:49:06","slug":"pennsylvanias-voter-rolls-are-safe-from-dojs-grab-rules-federal-judge-bringing-justice-dept-record-to-0-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/230414\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania’s voter rolls are safe from DOJ’s grab, rules federal judge, bringing Justice Dept record to 0-10"},"content":{"rendered":"

A federal judge dismissed<\/a> the Department of Justice\u2019s (DOJ) lawsuit against Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, who rejected its request for the state\u2019s unredacted voter files.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s order was the tenth straight loss<\/a> in courts for President Donald Trump and U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who\u2019ve sued thirty states and Washington, D.C. to gain unfettered access to voter registration lists \u2013 an unprecedented intrusion into states\u2019 authority.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those losses don\u2019t include a federal appeals court dismissal<\/a> of a DOJ lawsuit seeking similar private voter information from Michigan, handed down on June 24 \u2013 collectively a decisive blow to Trump\u2019s unconstitutional crusade to wrest control of election administration from the states.<\/p>\n

While the DOJ has claimed that it needs the unredacted files to confirm that states\u2019 voter list maintenance are in compliance with federal laws, U.S. District Chief Judge Cathy Bissoon saw through that reasoning in Saturday\u2019s ruling.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe quiet parts do not help,\u201d wrote<\/a> Bissoon. \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<\/p>\n

The DOJ also claimed it had authority under the Civil Rights Act to demand Pennsylvania\u2019s voter files, as it has in its other lawsuits. But as with those other cases, Judge Bissoon rejected this argument, reminding the Justice Department that the Civil Rights Act is \u201ca statute enacted to combat systemic racism against black citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, Bissoon said the DOJ\u2019s argument \u201cdoes violence\u201d to a section<\/a> of the Civil Rights Act that prohibits anyone, including election officials, from intentionally stealing, destroying or altering election records \u2013 \u201cTortured statutory construction tends to yield such a result,\u201d wrote Bissoon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On top of that, Bissoon said that DOJ filed its Civil Rights Act grievance in the wrong court, which tracks with this Justice Department administration\u2019s long list of blunders<\/a> as it has pursued these files.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Justice Department is still seeking voter rolls in all 50 states, and some of them have voluntarily complied. But no federal court has ruled yet that the DOJ actually has any legal basis or purpose for demanding, let alone retrieving such sensitive, private files.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge dismissed the Department of Justice\u2019s (DOJ) lawsuit against Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-230414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}