Power Grab/Decide who gets to vote and who counts it
A judge throws out the Justice Department’s policy of collecting every state’s voter rolls and urging removals
— A judge throws out DOJ's policy of collecting state voter rolls to remove voters.
Judge Sparkle Sooknanan ruled the policy broke four federal laws and “has removed United States citizens from the voter rolls in their home states.”
What happened
In May 2025, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division began demanding complete, unredacted voter rolls from the states, with names, birth dates, addresses and partial Social Security or driver’s license numbers. It made the request to 49 states and D.C. At least 18 states handed them over. DOJ sued states that refused, and more than 25 federal courts dismissed those suits.
The division shared the rolls with Homeland Security, which ran them through its SAVE citizenship database, and DOJ urged states to remove the voters it flagged. The administrative record calls this the “list maintenance project.”
On October 9, 2026, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan set aside and vacated the policy. In a 78-page opinion she found that the laws DOJ cited do not authorize it, and that it violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the Privacy Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act. She noted DOJ relied on a database it knew was inaccurate.
Who benefited
Voters on the rolls of every state, and Common Cause and the four voters who sued. The ruling bars DOJ from continuing the policy as written. It does not stop states from maintaining their own rolls.
Who wanted something
The administration, which built the policy to carry out Trump’s election executive order. DOJ argued that every registered voter is effectively the subject of an ongoing voter-fraud investigation. The judge called that one of its “startling arguments.”
Who lost out
DOJ’s voter-roll strategy, which has now lost in more than 25 district courts and here. The judge wrote that the policy “flies in the face of duly enacted laws designed to protect Americans.” The Supreme Court separately paused her June ruling on the SAVE database itself on September 25, so the database remains in use.
Why it matters
“Behind all the window dressing, the challenged policy represents the federal government’s attempt to decide who gets to vote,” the judge wrote. Voting groups have since told her court that DOJ’s October 15 suit to stop California counting 20,000 ballots may violate this order.
Sources U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (primary)U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (primary)CBS NewsThe Guardian
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