Federal Judge Blocks DOJ Collection of State Voter Rolls

A federal judge on Friday vacated the Department of Justice's policy of collecting unredacted state voter rolls to check them against a federal immigration database, ruling the practice unlawful, according to The Guardian.

What did the judge rule?

US district judge Sparkle Sooknanan issued a 78-page opinion vacating the DOJ's "list maintenance" policy, writing that it "has removed United States citizens from the voter rolls in their home states and risks disenfranchising many more — a policy that flies in the face of duly enacted laws designed to protect Americans," per the Guardian's account of the ruling.

Why did the DOJ start collecting the rolls?

The policy was adopted to comply with an election-integrity executive order from President Donald Trump, who has pushed his administration to expand investigations into non-citizen voting ahead of the November 2026 midterm elections, the Guardian reports. Control of Congress is at stake in that vote.

Why did the judge say the policy was illegal?

Sooknanan's opinion rests on two findings. First, the policy violated privacy laws tied to how the unredacted voter data was gathered and used. Second, and more fundamentally, the judge found the DOJ lacked authority to act in the first place: Congress assigned control over voter-roll maintenance to the states, not the federal government, under existing election law.

"Behind all the window dressing, the challenged policy represents the federal government's attempt to decide who gets to vote," Sooknanan wrote, according to the Guardian. "But Congress has left that authority where our constitution has always placed it: with the states."

Does the ruling stop states from checking their own rolls?

No. Sooknanan was explicit that her order "does not prevent the federal government from taking lawful steps to support states' efforts to maintain accurate voter rolls," the Guardian reports, and it does not bar states from running their own list-maintenance programs. The ruling targets only the DOJ's specific practice of demanding unredacted rolls and cross-matching them against a federal immigration database.

What happens next for the DOJ's policy?

The Guardian notes Sooknanan had already ruled against a related piece of the administration's voter-data push before Friday's decision, suggesting the litigation over the policy has moved through multiple rounds before this vacatur. The Guardian's report does not specify whether the DOJ plans to appeal the October 9 ruling, and no appeal has been confirmed in the source material reviewed for this article.

What does this mean before the midterms?

With the November midterm elections approaching and congressional control at stake, the ruling removes one tool the administration had been using to investigate non-citizen voting claims at the federal level, per the Guardian. States retain their own authority to manage voter rolls, but the specific DOJ program requiring unredacted roll submissions and immigration-database matching is vacated as of Friday's order, pending any further court action.