Federal Judge Blocks Trump DOJ Bid for Full Michigan Voter List

U.S. District Judge Hala Jarbou dismissed a Trump administration lawsuit seeking Michigan’s complete electronic voter registration list, ruling that three key federal statutes—the Help America Vote Act, the National Voter Registration Act and the Civil Rights Act—do not authorize the Justice Department to compel states to turn over sensitive voter data. The DOJ had demanded names, birth dates, addresses and either driver’s license numbers or partial Social Security numbers for more than 8 million Michigan voters; state officials had offered only the public version of the list that omits such identifiers. Jarbou warned that reading the NVRA to require disclosure of private registration information "would potentially cause the statute to impose an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote" under the First Amendment, reinforcing similar recent decisions in Oregon and California rejecting DOJ’s mass data‑grab. Since May, DOJ has sought full voter rolls from nearly every state and the District of Columbia and has sued about two dozen holdouts, claiming it needs the files to police ineligible voters and potential fraud, even as independent analyses and prior prosecutions show proven noncitizen or double voting is rare and errors often stem from clerical mistakes. The ruling adds judicial pushback to that campaign and underscores a growing clash between federal claims of election‑integrity oversight and state‑level concerns about voter privacy and chilling participation.