CHICAGO, IL: A federal judge in the Central District of Illinois ruled Friday that Illinois is not required to share sensitive registered voter data with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), finding that the government\u2019s broad demand for Illinois\u2019 voters confidential information runs afoul of federal law. <\/p>\n
This decision marks the 19th consecutive federal court ruling nationwide rejecting the DOJ\u2019s attempts to capture unredacted state voter rolls.<\/p>\n
The ruling stems from a December 2025 lawsuit\u2014United States v. Matthews\u2014filed after the Illinois State Board of Elections refused to turn over its unredacted voter registration file, a file that contains sensitive personal data about millions of Illinois residents including each individual\u2019s full name, date of birth, address, driver\u2019s license number and partial Social Security number. Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, Common Cause, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, and three Illinois voters\u2014Pablo Mendoza, Brian Beals, and Alejandra Iba\u00f1ez\u2014moved to intervene in the case, a motion that was granted.<\/p>\n
These clients are represented by Chicago Lawyers\u2019 Committee for Civil Rights, the ACLU National Voting Rights Project and the ACLU of Illinois. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis ruling is another decisive rejection of the federal government\u2019s attempts to bypass its limits of power,\u201d said Ethan Herenstein, staff attorney with the ACLU\u2019s Voting Rights Project. \u201cThe Trump administration cannot manufacture a voter fraud crisis to justify a sweeping up of sensitive personal information from millions of Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis victory makes it 19-0 in stopping the federal government from seizing your private voter data,\u201d said Maryam Jazini Dorcheh, Vice President of Litigation at Common Cause. \u201cThe record is clear: states run elections \u2014not the president. We won\u2019t stop fighting to protect voters\u2019 privacy.\u201d <\/p>\n
“The entire premise for this lawsuit is the myth of massive noncitizen voter fraud — a canard that has been repeatedly debunked even by supporters of this administration,” said Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR). “We are pleased that the court saw through this ruse and dismissed the case.”<\/p>\n
\u201cToday\u2019s ruling is a critical victory for the privacy rights of every Illinois voter,\u201d said Ami Gandhi, Director of the Midwest Voting Rights Program with Chicago Lawyers\u2019 Committee for Civil Rights. \u201cThe federal government’s attempt to seize sensitive personal records was an unprecedented overreach designed to intimidate voters and fuel false narratives about our election systems. By rejecting this demand, the court has sent a clear message that our democratic process will not be weaponized to harass or suppress Illinois voters, particularly naturalized citizens and people returning home from incarceration who are disproportionately targeted by these efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are grateful to the Court for rejecting the Trump Administration’s efforts to meddle in our State\u2019s elections and create a nationwide database that can be used to harass voters,\u201d added Kevin Fee, Legal Director at the ACLU of Illinois. \u201cWe must continue to fight the Administration\u2019s lies about supposed voter fraud, and its attempt to suppress voting by sowing doubt and confusion about our elections. This case is one part of that fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read the court\u2019s order dismissing the DOJ lawsuit here: https:\/\/www.aclu-il.org\/app\/uploads\/2026\/07\/US-v.-Matthews-Order.pdf<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO, IL: A federal judge in the Central District of Illinois ruled Friday that Illinois is not required…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-797758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}