Trump DOJ’s Voter Roll Demands Set for Appeals Court Tests

Two federal appeals courts will soon weigh whether state election officials must turn their unredacted voter rolls over to the Justice Department—an argument President Donald Trump’s administration has yet to win in court.

A Sixth Circuit panel will hold arguments Wednesday for a case involving Michigan, while Ninth Circuit judges are set to weigh California and Oregon’s refusal to turn over its rolls on May 19.

The DOJ lost all six cases decided on the merits at the trial court level—even when it drew Trump-appointed judges. These are the first to make it to an appellate panel, and DOJ could expand on its arguments that federal civil rights law mandates the voter rolls’ release to the federal government and justifies its asks.

“I do find that fascinating how all the district courts are reaching the same kind of bottom line that the Justice Department loses, but they’re getting there with different reasoning,” said Derek Clinger, senior counsel and director of partnerships with the University of Wisconsin law school’s State Democracy Research Initiative. Rulings against the DOJ were either because judges said federal law doesn’t classify voter rolls as a document that must be released or the administration didn’t state a proper basis and purpose for its requests.

To at least one conservative group, the DOJ’s court losses have been perplexing—especially since it had some success in similar cases.

“I’m surprised by the losing streak they’ve had,” said Logan Churchwell, communication and research director for the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which has had some success having voter rolls be deemed public records.

While the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said in 2024 that Maine’s voter rolls are a public record, the group also lost in the Ninth Circuit last month in an attempt to access Hawaii’s lists.

Nationwide Suits

The arguments are the latest in legal wrangling over the Trump administration’s quest for voter roll access following the president’s and his allies’ baseless fraud claims.

The DOJ demanded unredacted voter rolls from all 50 states; while multiple Republican-led states complied, others controlled by both parties refused. The DOJ has sued 30 states, alleging myriad violations of the National Voter Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act, and the Civil Rights Act of 1960, according to a litigation tracker maintained by Clinger.

It’s all part of “an attempt to basically take over” voter roll maintenance that the US Constitution says should be left to the states, said Maryam Jazini Dorcheh, senior director of litigation for Common Cause. The group filed amicus briefs urging the Sixth and Ninth circuits to side with the states.

“It’s exactly this type of power grab and overreach that can harm a lot of people,” she said.

The DOJ declined comment, but a spokeswoman referred to previous statements. In one, Civil Rights Division head Harmeet K. Dhillon said “states simply cannot pick and choose which federal laws they will comply with, including our voting laws, which ensure that all American citizens have equal access to the ballot in federal elections.”

None of the state officials provided comment.

Civil Rights Claims

The upcoming arguments will likely focus on Civil Rights Act claims.

In the Sixth Circuit—where the panel consists of two Democratic appointees and one Trump pick—it argues the law entitles it to Michigan’s voter rolls. The trial judge said its wording referring to records that come into the possession of an election official suggests Congress limited it only to documents that officials receive from prospective voters, “not records that states create.”

But the law’s text “does not exclude self-generated documents,” the DOJ said in a brief.

In the Ninth Circuit—with a panel made up of a Trump appointee and two picks by President Joe Biden—the DOJ could focus on a legal requirement that the attorney general must state a basis and purpose for their voter roll requests. Trial judges said its requests to California and Oregon didn’t pass muster, but the DOJ said its reasoning—that it was investigating “possible non-compliance” with the National Voter Registration Act—was sufficient.

Clinger said the DOJ’s focus on the Civil Rights Act makes sense, because “there’s just so little case law on that act that it’s just kind of basically writing from a blank slate at this point.”

Churchwell agreed that the dearth of case law surrounding the Civil Rights Act is driving a lot of the legal wrangling, but said the law is clear about the attorney general’s power to request voter rolls and what it does and doesn’t need to disclose to obtain them.

The law provides “a personal FOIA power that only one soul gets at a time.” he said.

It’s an open question whether these cases and others get to the US Supreme Court in time for the justices to take action before November. Federal law generally bars acting on voter rolls later than 90 days prior to a federal election.

Even if it’s too late, that may not stop the Trump administration from using what it has to sow doubts, Clinger said.

“I could imagine a scenario where the Justice Department gets the list, maybe in October, and then just kind of points to it as a way to try to undermine public confidence in the election,” Clinger said.

The cases are United States v. Benson, 6th Cir., No. 26-1225, oral arguments scheduled 5/13/26, United States v. Oregon, 9th Cir., No. 26-1231, oral arguments scheduled 5/19/26, and United States v. Weber, 9th Cir., No. 26-1232, oral argument scheduled 5/19/26.