Federal judge blocks Justice Department's voter roll verification program
Select a version of the text written from a presumed ideological perspective. This is not the original text, but a hypothetical version — how someone with that viewpoint might have phrased it. Tapping the current version again will return to the original or select cleaned version.
U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan ruled that the Justice Department's practice of cross-checking state voter lists with an immigration database and demanding removal of alleged ineligible voters violates federal law.
A federal judge in New York ruled Friday that the Justice Department's effort to obtain state voter rolls and compare them with the SAVE immigration database, then require states to purge voters deemed ineligible, is unlawful. In a 78-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, appointed by Joe Biden, said the policy improperly attempts to decide voter eligibility, a power that the Constitution reserves for the states. She noted that the Department had downplayed the risk of disenfranchising eligible citizens, citing evidence that the SAVE database can contain inaccurate citizenship information.
"The challenged policy represents the federal government's attempt to decide who gets to vote. But Congress has left that authority where our Constitution has always placed it: with the states," the judge wrote.
The ruling follows a lawsuit brought by the watchdog group Common Cause and was welcomed by civil-rights attorneys. Ming Cheung of the American Civil Liberties Union said the decision makes clear that the administration cannot use the federal government to disrupt elections.
The Justice Department said it is reviewing the decision. The court previously blocked a similar use of the expanded SAVE database in June, a ruling that the Supreme Court temporarily paused last month. Federal election law prohibits systematic voter-list reviews within 90 days of a federal election, which may limit the impact of both the new decision and the Supreme Court's pause on the upcoming midterms.
The Justice Department had earlier demanded that all 50 states provide complete, unredacted voter rolls, including Social Security numbers and dates of birth. Eighteen states complied, after which the Department ran the data through SAVE and notified states of individuals flagged as non-citizens. The judge warned that the expanded database includes outdated Social Security Administration data, risking the wrongful flagging of naturalized citizens.
To date, the Department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C. for refusing to turn over unredacted rolls and has lost 26 of those cases.