The ongoing battle over state-level voter data has once again tilted against the Trump administration’s efforts. A recent court decision in Maryland has added another layer to the complex legal saga.
In a decisive move last week, U.S. District Court Judge Stephanie Gallagher dismissed a lawsuit by the Justice Department demanding access to Maryland’s voter records. Appointed by former President Donald Trump, Gallagher noted that she aligns with other courts that have “addressed this issue,” concluding that the requested voter registration data “is not a record or paper that a state must produce to the United States.”
Maryland is now part of a growing list of states where federal attempts to acquire detailed voter data have been thwarted. This list includes legal defeats in states such as Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. Notably, in Georgia, a technicality led to the dismissal of a similar lawsuit, with the Justice Department refiling the case in a different jurisdiction.
The Justice Department’s rationale for seeking this data has been grounded in claims of ensuring compliance with federal election laws. However, Judge Gallagher did not find the department’s arguments persuasive, despite an opinion from its own legal counsel supporting the request. She stated, “The Court will not interpret the (Civil Rights Act) contrary to its text simply because an office of the party advancing that interpretation has adopted it.”
In the broader context of these legal battles, a federal judge recently ruled against a Homeland Security program, known as SAVE, intended to verify citizenship status, citing violations of federal privacy laws and the misidentification of eligible voters as noncitizens.
Opposition to these federal requests has come from both Democratic and some Republican officials, who argue that such data demands infringe upon privacy laws. Nonetheless, not all states have resisted; at least 13 states, including Alaska, Arkansas, and Texas, have provided or committed to sharing their voter registration data with the federal government, as reported by the Brennan Center for Justice and the Associated Press.
