Maryland Doesn’t Have to Give Voter Rolls to DOJ, Judge Says

Maryland’s top elections official doesn’t have to turn sensitive voter data over to the Justice Department amid the administration’s baseless voter fraud claims, a federal judge said.

The ruling, dated June 18 but uploaded to the docket on Monday, is President Donald Trump’s administration’s ninth loss in the dozens of cases it brought against states that refuse to turn over their unredacted voter rolls. None of the cases have so far gone the administration’s way, as judges either said federal law doesn’t classify a state’s voter registration list as a document that must be released or that the DOJ didn’t state a proper basis and purpose for its voter rolls requests.

Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher, a Trump appointee to the US District Court for the District of Maryland, tossed the case for the former reason. While the Civil Rights Act of 1960 requires elections officials to turn over certain records and papers that “come into” their “possession,” the rolls don’t fit into that category, she said.

In addition, interpreting the Civil Rights Act to require the constantly-updated rolls to be turned over would conflict with another part of the law criminalizing their alteration, she said. If the DOJ got its way, the same conduct other federal voting laws require would be deemed illegal, and Gallagher said she won’t read it “to produce such an absurd result.”

She also found unpersuasive the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel’s advisory opinion that the agency had the power to seek state voter rolls and share them with the Department of Homeland Security, saying she wouldn’t “interpret the CRA contrary to its text simply because an office of the party advancing that interpretation has adopted it.”

The administration demanded voter rolls from all 50 states. While multiple Republican-led states complied, others controlled by both parties refused. The DOJ has sued 30 states and Washington, DC, according to a litigation tracker maintained by the University of Wisconsin law school’s State Democracy Research Initiative.

The DOJ has appealed multiple adverse rulings; the US Courts of Appeals for the Sixth and Ninth Circuits heard oral arguments but haven’t issued rulings.

The case is United States v. DeMarinis, D. Md., No. 1:25-cv-03934, 6/18/26.