DOJ Sued Over Push to Gather Sensitive Registered Voter Data (1)

The Justice Department was hit with a lawsuit Tuesday challenging its efforts to collect and centralize sensitive data on registered voters from nearly every state.

DOJ is attempting to build a “sprawling new voter surveillance and purging apparatus that endangers millions of Americans’ fundamental voting and privacy rights,” the nonprofit advocacy group Common Cause and a group of voters alleged in a complaint filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

DOJ has sued 30 states and Washington, DC, since last summer to collect voters’ names, addresses, and other information such as partial Social Security or full driver’s license numbers. Courts in Michigan, Oregon, California, Massachusetts and Rhode Island so far have dismissed the DOJ’s suits, though at least a dozen states have voluntarily provided the data.

DOJ has said it plans to run the voter data through the US Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system. The database was expanded last year to allow state and federal agencies to conduct citizenship checks on voters. But Common Cause said in its complaint that the new system is flawed and “has already falsely identified significant numbers of U.S. citizens as non-citizens, imperiling their fundamental right to vote.”

Anthony Nel, who’s registered to vote in Texas and is a Common Cause member, alleges he was wrongly identified as a noncitizen and removed from the state’s voter roll after Texas entered into an agreement with DOJ to share its data. Nel was born in South Africa and became a US citizen at 16 when his parents naturalized, according to the complaint.

The agreement Texas signed with DOJ also includes a clause allowing the agency to disclose the data to unidentified contractors to assist with DOJ’s list maintenance verification process. The centralization and potential sharing of the data poses significant cybersecurity risks. One database filled with millions of Americans’ information creates “a new target for hackers and malign foreign actors who seek to undermine our elections and Americans’ data security,” the suit says.

Common Cause also said DOJ has flouted notice-and-comment requirements under the Privacy Act and hasn’t been transparent about how it’s handling or storing the sensitive information.

DOJ also has no authority to conduct the data consolidation and purging operation, Common Cause alleges. Although the federal government can sue states suspected of violating its obligations under federal voting laws, those statutes “do not authorize what DOJ is presently doing,” the complaint says.

The suit asserts violations of the Administrative Procedure Act and the US Constitution. It asks the court to enjoin DOJ from centralizing the data. It also asks the court to order DOJ to destroy any confidential voter data it holds, and to instruct parties it shared the information with to do the same.

DOJ didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Protect Democracy Project, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of the District of Columbia represent Common Cause and its members.

The case is Common Cause v. US Dep’t of Just., D.D.C., No. 1:26-cv-01352, complaint filed 4/21/26.