A federal judge has vacated the Justice Department’s voter-list maintenance policy, ruling that the program exceeded the department’s statutory authority and violated federal privacy and information-collection law.
The policy sought complete state voter rolls, including sensitive identifying information, and used federal citizenship data to identify people the government believed might be ineligible to vote. Eighteen states entered arrangements to provide lists and act on the department’s eligibility findings; other states resisted and faced federal lawsuits.
Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan of the US District Court for the District of Columbia granted partial summary judgment to Common Cause and individual voters. She concluded that the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act did not authorize the across-the-board demands.
The court also found the policy arbitrary and capricious because the administrative record did not show that officials had adequately confronted the risk of error. The opinion described citizens whose registrations were cancelled after the federal SAVE system failed to confirm their citizenship, including people who had naturalized after receiving Social Security numbers.
The ruling further held that the government had augmented a federal records system without complying with the Privacy Act and had imposed a common reporting requirement on states without following the Paperwork Reduction Act. Because those statutory grounds resolved the case, the court did not decide the plaintiffs’ constitutional claims.
The decision sets aside the policy rather than merely barring its use against the named plaintiffs. The Justice Department may appeal; no stay was identified when this report was published.
Read the filed 78-page opinion in Common Cause v. Department of Justice.
