Federal Judge Dismisses Trump Administration Lawsuit Seeking Access to Arizona Voter Registration Data

U.S. District Judge Susan Brnovich on April 28 dismissed the Department of Justice's lawsuit against Arizona, ruling that the state's voter registration database is "not a document subject to request by the Attorney General" under federal law [1]. Brnovich, whom Trump appointed to the bench during his first term in 2018, dismissed the case with prejudice — meaning the DOJ cannot refile — because, she wrote, "amendment would be legally futile" [2].

The ruling is the sixth consecutive federal court defeat for the Trump administration's campaign to force states to hand over detailed voter registration records, including dates of birth, driver's license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers [3]. Judges in California, Oregon, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island have already rejected identical DOJ arguments [4].

What the DOJ Wanted — and Why

In July 2025, the Justice Department sent a letter to Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes demanding the state's complete voter registration list. The request specified full names, dates of birth, home addresses, driver's license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers for nearly 5 million registered Arizona voters [5][6].

The administration's stated purpose was to assess whether Arizona was complying with federal requirements to maintain accurate voter rolls and remove ineligible voters [7]. But in a Rhode Island proceeding, a DOJ attorney acknowledged the real operational goal: the department intended to share unredacted voter data with the Department of Homeland Security to cross-reference it against the SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) database and identify potential noncitizens [3][8].

Internal documents obtained through litigation revealed that the plan to share data with DHS was in place far earlier than the department initially disclosed. In one November 2025 email, Eric Neff, the current head of the DOJ's voting section, advised that the department keep some election officials "in the dark" about what it intended to do with the records [9][10].

The Legal Reasoning: Three Statutes, Zero Authority

The DOJ cited three federal statutes as authority for its demand: the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (Title III), the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), and the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) [11].

Judge Brnovich rejected each basis. Her core finding was that the Civil Rights Act's provision allowing the attorney general to inspect "records and papers" related to voter registration applies to individual voter applications and similar documents that voters submit to election officials — not to a state-compiled electronic database [1][2].

On the NVRA, Brnovich followed reasoning from a Michigan federal court: the act requires states to make records available for "public inspection" regarding list maintenance activities, but does not mandate turning over the underlying database with sensitive personal identifiers [2][12]. On HAVA, which requires states to maintain computerized voter lists, the judge found no provision granting the federal government authority to demand copies [11].

Brnovich also identified an internal contradiction in the DOJ's argument. The Civil Rights Act creates criminal penalties for "altering" documents that must be preserved and turned over to the DOJ, but the NVRA and HAVA require election officials to regularly update the electronic voter database — meaning compliance with one law would create liability under the other [2].

"This case presents a legal question: is the Attorney General entitled to the [statewide voter registration list] under Title III," Brnovich wrote. "It does not present a political question" [3].

The Federal Government's Case

Election law scholar John J. Martin has identified the Civil Rights Act as "perhaps the strongest of the three arguments" available to the DOJ, because it explicitly grants inspection authority to the attorney general [11]. The statute, however, requires the attorney general to provide "a statement of the basis and the purpose" for each request [11].

Supporters of the administration's approach argue that the federal government has a legitimate interest in verifying that only citizens appear on voter rolls, particularly given concerns about noncitizen registration. President Trump issued Executive Order 14399, "Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections," directing DHS to compile citizenship verification lists from federal databases and share them with states [8].

The DOJ has also argued that without access to complete voter files, it cannot independently assess whether states are removing ineligible voters as required by federal law [7]. Some conservative legal scholars contend that the NVRA's public inspection provision should be read broadly enough to encompass the full voter database, not just records of list-maintenance activities.

Arizona's Constitutional and Statutory Objections

Arizona officials mounted both statutory and constitutional defenses. Secretary of State Fontes and Attorney General Kris Mayes argued that Arizona law strictly prohibits disclosure of the sensitive personal information contained in voter registration records, and that releasing it would expose state officials to felony liability [5][6].

"This moment is a win for voter privacy," Fontes said after the ruling. "I will never comply with illegal requests that put Arizona voters in harm's way" [13].

The ACLU of Arizona, along with voting rights groups and individual Arizona voters, filed motions to intervene in the case, arguing that bulk federal access to voter data would create substantial privacy and cybersecurity risks [14]. Arizona's voter registration system, AVID (Arizona Voter Information Database), is hosted on Azure Government Cloud with multifactor authentication, DDoS protection, and NIST SP 800-53 security controls [15]. Critics warned that centralizing this data within the executive branch, without congressional authorization, would create an attractive target for hackers and foreign adversaries.

In March 2026, Fontes and Mayes urged county election officials to withhold voter data from federal agencies, including the FBI and DHS, citing ongoing concerns about how the information would be used [16].

The Nationwide Campaign: A State-by-State Breakdown

The Arizona lawsuit was one piece of the largest federal campaign to obtain state voter registration data in American history. Since May 2025, the DOJ has sent requests to 48 of the 50 states — all except North Dakota, which does not require voter registration, and North Carolina, where the department obtained access through separate litigation [4][7].

Source: Brennan Center / AP / UW Law Tracker

Data as of Apr 28, 2026CSV

Of the 48 states that received requests, 12 fully complied: Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming [4][7]. Five additional states provided publicly available voter information — names, addresses, and party affiliation — while withholding sensitive data like Social Security and driver's license numbers [7].

The remaining 31 states and the District of Columbia refused outright. The DOJ filed federal lawsuits against 30 of these jurisdictions [4][7]. As of late April 2026, six of those lawsuits have been dismissed on the merits, with no DOJ victories [2][3].

The DOJ offered states a "confidential memorandum of understanding" governing the terms of data transfer, including provisions for sharing voter information with DHS. The draft agreements were labeled "confidential," raising concerns from transparency advocates about the lack of public accountability [8][17].

In a development that alarmed privacy advocates, the DOJ's chief privacy officer resigned in April 2026 as the department prepared to share state voter data with DHS, reportedly over concerns about Privacy Act compliance [18].

The Evidence Base: Noncitizen Voting in Arizona

The administration's campaign rests on the premise that noncitizen voter registration is a significant problem requiring federal intervention. The available evidence in Arizona does not support that premise at scale.

The Heritage Foundation's Election Fraud Database, which tracks documented cases of election fraud nationwide and is frequently cited by proponents of stricter election enforcement, identifies approximately 23 total fraud cases in Arizona across all categories. Of these, only three involve noncitizen registration or voting [19][20].

Source: Heritage Foundation Election Fraud Database / Brennan Center

Data as of Apr 28, 2026CSV

In the 2020 general election, more than 3.4 million ballots were cast in Arizona. State officials referred 22 allegations of voter fraud for prosecution — less than 0.001% of ballots cast [21]. Cross-partisan election experts have consistently found that noncitizen voting in federal elections is "virtually nonexistent" [21].

In September 2024, Arizona discovered a data coding error in its driver's license database dating back roughly 20 years. The error affected approximately 218,000 voter records where proof of citizenship documentation could not be verified in the system [22][23]. However, subsequent review found that only two individuals on the affected list were actually noncitizens [22]. The error was a bureaucratic glitch in how pre-1996 driver's licenses were recorded, not evidence of systematic fraud.

What Happens Next: The Ninth Circuit Path

The DOJ has already appealed dismissals in Michigan, Oregon, and California, sending those cases to their respective federal circuit courts [2][3]. Whether the department will appeal the Arizona ruling to the Ninth Circuit remains unclear — a DOJ spokesperson declined to comment on the decision [3].

If the administration does appeal, it faces an uphill battle. The Ninth Circuit has historically been skeptical of federal overreach into state election administration. Recent Ninth Circuit precedents have addressed voter registration issues in Arizona specifically, including rulings on proof-of-citizenship requirements that have generally upheld state authority over voter qualification processes [24][25].

The legal pathway for the DOJ to ultimately prevail appears narrow under current law. Election law scholars note that passage of the SAVE America Act, which would grant explicit federal authority to access voter data for citizenship verification, could change the legal landscape [11]. Without new legislation, the administration's statutory arguments have now been rejected by every federal court to consider them.

The broader implications extend beyond any single lawsuit. The administration's campaign has forced a national reckoning over the balance between federal oversight of elections and state control of voter data — a tension embedded in the Constitution's dual allocation of election authority. With midterm elections approaching in November 2026, the legal and political stakes of that question are rising.

The Internal Strategy

Internal documents and reporting have shed light on how the voter data campaign was organized within the DOJ. The effort was led by political appointees rather than career attorneys in the department's voting section, with Neff — a Trump appointee now heading that section — playing a central coordinating role [9][10].

CNN reported in April 2026 that internal communications showed the department developing its data-sharing framework with DHS before it had obtained voter data from most states, suggesting the cross-referencing plan preceded rather than followed any analysis of the data [10]. The Brennan Center for Justice described the effort as "unprecedented" in its scope and characterized the confidential memoranda of understanding as an attempt to circumvent public accountability [8][17].

The DOJ's position is that it is exercising routine oversight authority that Congress granted decades ago. The administration points to bipartisan concerns about voter roll accuracy and notes that federal law has long required states to maintain current voter lists. Whether that authority extends to bulk extraction of sensitive personal data from state databases is the question every court has so far answered in the negative.