A federal appeals court has blocked the Department of Justice (DOJ) from checking Michigan’s voter registration rolls for possible fraud.
In a 2-1 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit argued the Trump administration was using Title III to “ensure that some people have not voted.”
Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 allows the government to “help end voting discrimination,” the court admitted.
“Congress enacted Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 to help end voting discrimination,” Judge Andre Mathis wrote in the majority opinion. “Title III of the Act gave teeth to prior civil-rights legislation by empowering the U.S. Attorney General to obtain certain state voting records so that he could investigate potential violations and enforce federal election law. Back then, the government used this power to ensure that everyone who had the right to vote could freely exercise that right.”
Judge Mathis continued: “But today, the government invokes Title III for an inverse purpose — to ensure that some people have not voted.”
In the majority opinion, Judge Mathis added that “over the summer of 2025,” the Trump administration had “demanded election records” from each state, along with Washington, DC. The Trump administration also demanded that Michigan turn over its voter rolls, which included information such as voters’ names, birth dates, and “partial social security numbers.”
Judge Mathis said that after the government filed a lawsuit “to compel” Michigan’s Secretary of State to turn over unredacted voter registration rolls, a district court ended up dismissing the lawsuit “concluding that Title III’s narrow text cannot withstand the weight of the government’s broad request”:
Over the summer of 2025, the United States demanded election records from nearly every State and the District of Columbia. As part of this endeavor, the government insisted that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson produce her state’s voter rolls. Three weeks later, the government doubled down—it demanded not only the names on Michigan’s voter rolls, but also the dates of the birth, partial social security numbers, and driver’s license numbers of every registered voter in the state. Benson provided the government with the public version of Michigan’s statewide registered voter list but refused to go any further; she believed the federal government had no statutory authority to demand the sensitive, unredacted voter information it sought. So the government filed suit to compel Benson to produce those records. The district court dismissed the suit, concluding that Title III’s narrow text cannot withstand the weight of the government’s broad request. We agree and affirm.
The ruling from the federal appeals court represents the “first appeals court to weigh in on the Trump administration’s efforts to obtain the unredacted voter rolls” from states, CBS News reported.
Nine district courts are reported to have “dismissed the lawsuits filed against the states,” according to the outlet.
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