Federal judge dismisses Justice Department lawsuit seeking detailed Maryland voter data

By — Julie Carr Smyth, Associated Press Julie Carr Smyth, Associated Press Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/federal-judge-dismisses-justice-department-lawsuit-seeking-detailed-maryland-voter-data Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Federal judge dismisses Justice Department lawsuit seeking detailed Maryland voter data Politics Jun 23, 2026 7:53 PM EDT COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The Trump administration's attempts to obtain state-level voter data have suffered yet another legal blow. U.S. District Court Judge Stephanie Gallagher last week dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit against Maryland that sought access to the state's voter records. Educate your inbox Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else. Gallagher, appointed by Republican President Donald Trump during his first term, wrote that she "joins every court to have addressed this issue" in concluding that the unredacted voter registration file "is not a record or paper that a state must produce to the United States." With the dismissal Thursday in Maryland, the number of states where the Justice Department has lost similar cases comes to nine. The department has sued to force release of detailed state voter data — which includes dates of birth, addresses, driver's license numbers and partial Social Security numbers — in 30 states and the District of Columbia. READ MORE: FBI searches office of Ohio group that supports voter registration efforts In addition to Maryland, judges have rejected those attempts in Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. In Georgia, a judge dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit because it had been filed in the wrong city, prompting the government to refile elsewhere. In the Maryland case, the Justice Department tried to cite an opinion written by its own legal counsel's office that it had the right to the state voter records under federal civil rights law, but Gallagher was not persuaded. "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," she wrote. In explaining their push for the records, federal officials have said that they need the voter data to ensure that states are complying with federal election laws related to maintaining voter registration lists, even though states already have detailed processes to do that. In the case out of Rhode Island, a Justice Department attorney acknowledged that the department was seeking unredacted voter roll information so it could be shared with the Department of Homeland Security to check citizenship status. On Monday, a federal judge found that the Homeland Security program to check citizenship, referred to as SAVE, violated federal privacy laws and was wrongly identifying eligible voters as noncitizens. She ruled that the system coul